Maybe Nokia will want to send data down those d-boxes John. What do you think about CUBE's chanes for some serious silicon selling for Pegasus boxes now?ÿ
Nokia buys Ipsilon for $120 million
By Ben Heskett
December 9, 1997, 5:35 p.m. PT
update | news analysis Taking on Cisco Systems (CSCO) is no easy task,
and once proud start-up Ipsilon Networks may be feeling the strain of
such an undertaking.
The company that once framed the debate on ways to send traffic based on
IP--the network transport protocol for the Net--to its destination was
plucked today by Finnish mobile telephone giant Nokia for $120 million.
As recently as May, Ipsilon insisted its plan was to take the company
public and build it up through high demand for IP-based networking
equipment.
Such is the life for a combative start-up hell-bent on taking on the
800-pound Gorilla of networking, according to industry pundits.
"I think Ipsilon, in a sense, caused their own demise--so religious,"
Craig Johnson, an analyst with Dataquest, said. "I don't think any
start-up has targeted Cisco and won."
Now the company faces an uncertain future as the data networking cog in
Nokia's vast telecommunications holdings. Nokia has held a minority
interest in Ipsilon since June.
Nokia said its intention in purchasing Ipsilon is to expand the
company's role in the booming American data networking market.
Sunnyvale, California-based Ipsilon's more than 100 employees will be
subsumed into the telecommunications arm of the Finnish company.
Ipsilon's president and chief executive, Brian NeSmith, will continue to
oversee the Ipsilon side of Nokia's business. The company will remain in
its Sunnyvale headquarters.
John Carosella, Ipsilon's vice president of marketing and business
development, said the company saw an opportunity to expand into the
wireless data networking space and could not pass on the chance to take
advantage of Nokia's multibillion-dollar backing. "Sometimes you can
keep your blinds on and go after the same old, same old," he said.
With the word "convergence" on the tips of many tongues in the
networking industry, Nokia's play for a broader role in the data
networking market--and the accompanying marketing muscle of an $8.5
billion firm--could be a boon to Ipsilon's IP-over ATM (asynchronous
transfer mode) line of networking products.
But the anti-Cisco bluster of Ipsilon's past may largely be silenced as
the remaining members of the company's engineering team grow more and
more comfortable within the corporate structure of Nokia.
Ipsilon executives admitted the days of Cisco bashing are over. "I think
we will continue to push innovation in the space," Carosella said. "I
don't think we'll be taking an adversarial role with Cisco.
"In the end, customers didn't want that from us anyway. They wanted us
to solve their problems," he added.
Cisco was forced to respond to the IP-based switching craze, developing
a next-generation router for high-end service provider accounts that
appeared this spring and floating a concept called "Tag Switching" last
fall that is currently being debated within the Internet Engineering
Task Force.
Now Cisco may have the last laugh.
ÿrelated news stories ÿ PC Card integrates cell phone October 31, 1997
ÿ Wireless initiative bundles services August 5, 1997 ÿ Cisco router
emerges from vapor May 7, 1997 ÿ Networking players rally around IP
April 9, 1997 ÿ Is Ipsilon's work "confusing?" January 31, 1997 ÿ
Cisco's IP switching foes consolidate January |
