RE: But they need to purchase equipment NOW, so they go with flawed
ASND products in a BIG way just because they are available, instead of waiting for evaluations to complete?
Of course, ASND is the incumbent vendor for UUNET and other sites, so competitor's products may not impact ASND's sales cycles significantly until next quarter, or perhaps the quarter after. UUNET has huge ongoing needs, and ASND is a known quantity and a trusted partner. In essence, ASND's "flaws" are well known by now and known flaws are alway better than those provided by a new vendor. It makes sense that the UUNET relationship will continue for at least the immediate future.
One shouldn't underestimate Mory's ability to call and encourage UUNET to execute an big order now to help ASND save a quarter, or provide a little PR window dressing to soften the blow of a bad quarter. The fact is that UUNET continues to be a big customer/partner of ASND, and a $30MM order may not be anything "new", but rather a chance for ASND to respond to the tremendous amount of recent bad news. I believe it has been stated here that UUNET is 15% of ASND's business. If so, a $30MM order is well within UUNET's typical ordering behaviour and isn't worth getting too excited about.
I just hope ASND was able to close off their European business, which is probably the real determining factor in whether they hit estimates. An earlier post suggested that ASND is making it known that they won't be able to ship TNT to europe until next quarter - if so, the results could be ugly. |
