Certainly CSCO is not invincible. But if CSCO executes effectively
it would be pretty hard for LU to dethrone CSCO in the enterprise
market. CSCO is strong there and getting stronger. Popular
opinions aside, CSCO is not a one-trick-pony router company.
With router modules inside every switch, CSCO has neutralized
the likes of Cabletron and Bay.
LU is stronger in telco market than CSCO, and ASND is
stronger in ISP. No doubt. But CSCO came from a standing
start 0% to 14% in a short period of time.
<<BAY suffered from poor execution of a merger. Again, not CSCO related.>>
Yes, but CSCO took full advantage. And I suspect is taking
advantage of ASND's merger related problems. In fact, I surmise
that it was CSCO who pushed their rivals into ill-conceived
and rushed mergers. You see, CSCO came out with the end-to-end
story, and all of a sudden you see CSCO rivals 3Com and
Ascend taking the high-risk road of cross-continent merger.
CSCO checked out Cascade and passed on them. Most likely it
was because of geography and culture. Not wanting to repeat
the Synoptics/Wellfleet disaster, Cisco carefully chose its
partners to be local. And then went around spreading the gospel
of end-to-end. And lo and behold, these guys forgot how high
risk a merger of equals is, and took the bait. Now Cisco
is profiting off the confusion and misexecution of COMS and ASND.
>>In either case, I appreciate your opinions. We could revisit this issue in three
months.>>
Thanks, and since I hold a small stake in ASND, I hope in three
months they have regained their focus to where they are strong
in RAS/WAN. I'm putting my dependent care reimbursement in
ASND so I might have a bit more in a few weeks to average down. |
