Rick, You said it! The thing is this, Atin does work for a competitor, but does not know of any innovations or engineering/software designs that gives FTEL an advantage. Also, we are not on the radars as a competitor. This is absolutely perfect! By the time we are on the radar, we may be a lot bigger than they think. If we do have techinical superiority and a decided edge at that, when they learn what it is, it will be too late. The development cycle that is necessary to get their product, up to ours, assuming we are doing something different, can not be bypassed. That puts us 6 months, at a minimum, ahead. While they catch up, we play follow the leader and capture market share and the reputation of being the leader. I talked with a software programmer, Bill, at the NYC Demo. He seemed to be saying that we ARE doing innovations with our software, that the competition will be hard pressed to equal. Now Atin wonders why we are not following the rest of the pack in standards for software and saying that this is a problem. I wholeheartedly disagree!!! Frank is a leader, not a follower. Perhaps the standard that NMSS is trying to use is inferior to what FTEL uses? I don't know, but I know for certain that neither does Atin. I mean the FTEL web page is very informative(once you get past those little balls:-), but something tells me Frank doesn't have source code out there!<GGGGGGGGG>
BTW FTEL has shown that they can respond to the demands of the marketplace very quickly. Remeber the Pop-in-a-Box. That was done an out of direct reponse to customer demands. Gee didn't ATT buy a bunch of those? If they demand more ports or a higher density, we have seen enough evidence, IMO, to know that FTEL will answer that demand. Maybe being a 'smaller' company gives us some flexibility. Atin and the competition should beleive that they are doing everything better than FTEL, pride can always go against you, if you allow it too cloud your vision.
Evan |
