Hi Bambs and thenewnetwork,
I see the spending. I work for a small consulting firm and at our company, we get new laptops every three years. They are leased by the company and refreshed periodically. My brother works at a law firm and they get the same thing. My guess is that this happens at most companies, because few buy computers for the average worker anymore. It doesn't make sense to own a depreciated asset that will be obsolete in a couple of years. So the spending cycle continues on PC, but it flows and ebbs with the number of people employed.
Also, for Cisco specific products, I see huge demand ahead. Let's recount a few markets. Wireless LANs. This market is already seeing heading gains. It's really catching on. Many of my friends are buying them for personal use to replace all those ugly wires snaking around their house. VPNs. Every telecommuter loves them and companies are really getting turned on to this as a great way to extend their internal network into their employees homes, securely and cheaply. The business case is alive and well there. Security and disaster recovery. Say no more. After 9/11 and all the saber rattling going on out there, people feel insecure. Everyone wants to get geographic redundancy to disperse their assets for disaster recovery purposes. Everyone is looking at ways to secure their networks and servers. Companies are lining up to secure their networks and infrastructure against terrorism, cataclysm, and hacker attacks. Everthing IP. Enterprise businesses are still migrating their old PBX networks to IP. Why? Because it's cheaper to run and cheaper to maintain, pure and simple. IP allows for consolidation of a companies phone and data networks, which is a great business case. The list goes on. SANs are another area Cisco is hitting hard and starting to see the payoff. Folks, the dry spell is almost up and the conductor has just fired up the train. Within one year, many on this thread will be wondering if they missed hopping aboard when the crisis seemed to be at its worst. I've already completed most of my rotation back into large cap mutual funds. I'm also starting to buy back into some tech funds. It seems to be sheer lunacy right now, but that's what contrarian investing is all about. I may be off a year, but when you have 10 years to play with (my remaining investing horizon), what's a year or two? |
