<<At one time, is it true that the big four in networking each have their strength and weakness in certain segments. Through time, they are encroaching in each others niche, not to mention Intel, NN, Fore and numerous others that are chipping away here and there.>>
Ramsey - I'll take a crack at this. Past strengths (1991 -1995) of the big four were as follows: Cisco routing, Cabletron chassis hubs, Bay Networks routing and hubs, 3Com Nic cards.
The landscape has changed in the last two years. Shared hubs have given way to switching. The two leaders here are Cisco and 3Com, which explains why Bay and Ctron have struggled with top line growth as their hub business has been retired. Secondly, Remote Access has been a high growth area which allowed USR and Ascend to get noticed.
Competition has intensified and technological differences are becoming more limited, but networking is still a long ways from being a commodity. The next inflection points for supercharged growth are as follows:
- Fast Ethernet switching to the desktop
- Gigabit Speed Routed Backbones through Layer 3 Switches
- Deploymen of ATM Wide Area services
- Deployment of Virtual Private Networks
The leaders in these areas should prosper in 1998. My bets would be Cisco, 3Com, and Newbridge (for their carrier products). Further out an important battle will be what comes after analog modems - XDSL or Cable, and integration of multimedia on enterpise nets. I see this in '99 and 2000.
Bruce |
