>> To All: I found this on the csco thread. Anyone have the knowledge to comment??
techstocks.com
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I have worked for ACC a long time and wasn't even aware that Scott Rafe had left. That should give you a clue about his prominence at ACC. If the accuracy of his posting is any indication of what he knows about ACC products and business relationships, then it is probably fortunate that he left ACC to work for a competitor.
ACC is not a revolving door for engineers. I can think of two hardware engineers and two software engineers that have left ACC in the past 5 years that I would consider a big loss. Many whom have joined ACC during that time are just as good and are still with us. Since Scott mentioned Fred Baker by name, I will comment on him. I have a lot of respect and admiration for Fred and wish he was still at ACC. Fred's main interest was being actively involved in IETF working groups, and the size and wealth of Cisco could more easily accommodate that. Fred has certainly risen to the occasion and I wish him well. ACC, as a smaller company, needs to concentrate its engineering talents on product development. All companies lose key personnel from time to time. We all know that Cisco lost its key BFR designer. BTW, Fred left ACC about three years ago -- hardly recent history. Also, ACC lost ***a*** senior hardware engineer during the Tigris development, not ***the*** lead engineer.
It is surprising to me how little Scott Rafe knows about the Tigris. For starters, it uses a 68060, not a 68030. This is just the first incarnation of the Tigris which is targeted at the network access concentrator and remote access server markets. It was not intended to be a backbone router or switch. Other incarnations will follow, some of which are in development as I write this. And yes, there will be ATM capability for the Tigris as well as improved performance. But the performance of the existing platform is not all that shabby. When compared against a MAX TNT by a customer, the Tigris out performed the TNT (and was less buggy, which surprises me because the Tigris was a beta release and the TNT was a production release).
Saying that the 10.0 release took 2 years is absolute hog wash. 9.0 was released in 2Q96 and 10.3 (which Tigris is based on) was released in 2Q97. 10.0 was released some time after 9.0 and before 10.3 (surprise!). I believe the lead engineer on the 10.0 release hadn't even been with the company that long. The development cycle for a major software release at ACC is usually about 9 months. I didn't work on 10.0 but my impression was that it happened rather quickly, particularly considering that it contained an entirely new IP routing stack (RIPv2, OSPFv2, BGP-4).
The modem card Scott Rafe talks about was developed by Newbridge. I wonder if he has the same disrespect for Newbridge that he apparently has for the company he used to work for. And what intimate details do you suppose a sales engineer attached to a remote office knows about the CEO's of the two companies? If Newbridge owns 60% of ACC, wouldn't you expect them to want a CEO at ACC that they respected and had confidence in? It is pretty common when a company takes a majority ownership of another company to load up the board and executive offices with "their" people.
I am surprised to learn that Ericsson is sleeping with Newbridge. Now let me see, Newbridge is sleeping with Siemens and Siemens and Ericsson are competitors. That should make for an interesting menage a trois.
Scott Rafe knows very little about the ACC relationship with Ericcson and even less about Newbridge's short dance with Ascend (neither do I, but I wouldn't discuss it in an open forum any way). Newbridge was not looking for a remote access server from Ascend, and from my perspective was not that interested in Ascend per se. Ascend did have some technology Newbridge was interested in, and Ascend being who they are, was playing hard ball.
Mr. Rafe concluded his diatribe by saying "All historical fact and some is MHO...". The truth is that there is little historical fact, and his post was far from humble.
I have been reading this thread for a long time and have never posted because of my association with a Newbridge affiliate. However, you asked for a comment from someone with knowledge on the subject and I felt obliged to repond. I'll go back into my cave now.
Cheers,
Round Tuit |
