Here is the article I referred to yesterday. Note the HSTR market is only $141M. However, I believe that is current sales. There is still a huge legacy base out there that can be targeted for backbone upgrades, etc. Complete upgrades to ethernet are going to take longer because it is a forklift upgrade. New wiring has to be pulled. That is why I think you are going to see mostly backbone upgrades to FE, ATM, or for a few cases, HSTR. Olicom has a lot of token ring experience, and I think they are a good candidate to capture a lot of this backbone work, especially overseas.
Cisco drops out of fast token-ring effort
By Jim Duffy
Network World, 4/1/98
Citing lack of market demand, Cisco Systems, Inc. this week withdrew from a vendor association promoting and helping define standards for 100M bit/sec token-ring LANs.
Cisco has backed out of the High-Speed Token-Ring Alliance (HSTRA), a group of about seven companies working to boost token-ring speeds from 4M and 16M bit/sec to 100M bit/sec and beyond. The alliance was formed last summer largely for awareness, rather than technical, purposes, members said.
''With our customers, we have found very little interest in high-speed token-ring,'' said Randall Campbell, a Cisco product manager. Customers are instead interested in bridging existing token-ring LANs with higher-speed Ethernet and ATM networks, Campbell said.
''Even those customers that were purely intending to stay with token-ring for the next several years, (they) wanted to be able to position their networks to be able to integrate Ethernet technology as it made business sense,'' Campbell said.
With that, Cisco plans to tunnel token-ring frames through 100M bit/sec Fast Ethernet links using its InterSwitch Link (ISL) protocol, Campbell said. ISL is Cisco's proprietary VLAN trunking protocol for Fast Ethernet.
For ATM, Cisco will continue to offer token-ring LAN Emulation products. And Cisco will continue to participate in the IEEE 802.5 committee that mandates token-ring standards, and will develop 802.5-compliant HSTR products if a market develops, Campbell said.
Cisco's departure from the HSTRA will have no impact on the IEEE's 802.5 standards work around high-speed token-ring, said Robert Love, chairman of the IEEE 802.5 committee. He expects the standard to be ratified this summer.
Indeed, all Cisco risks by leaving the HSTRA is a public relations hit; the real work on the standard is being done within the IEEE, members said. Still, some believe Cisco's withdrawal from the alliance can only hurt the HSTR effort.
''That's not good,'' said Daniel Long, network and telecommunications analyst at Collier County Public Schools in Florida. ''We're getting ready to go out on bids for new routers and that's one of the specifications taht we're going to require.''
Other say Cisco's departure connotes nefarious intentions.
''Cisco is attempting to torpedo multi-vendor, industry standard HSTR efforts and promote, instead, the Cisco proprietary ISL technology,'' said Kevin Tolly, president of the Tolly Group, a catalyst behind the formation of the HSTRA. ''Cisco has decided to make a pre-emptive strike against those vendors in an attempt to eliminate IEEE 802.5 HSTR from serious consideration by network managers and make ISL a de facto industry standard.''
''They obviously do not stand behind their token-ring customers; (they) want to lock them into proprietary solutions,'' said Jorgen Hog, vice-president of network product marketing for HSTRA member Olicom, Inc., a token-ring development partner of Cisco's.
Others, though, say Cisco's move is indicative of business reality.
''The question is whether Cisco's withdrawal will have any effect on the market (for high-speed token-ring),'' said David Passmore, president of NetReference, Inc. in Sterling, Va. ''I think the answer is no because there was no market to start with.''
Some HSTRA members seem to support Passmore's view. Bay Networks, Inc. is holding off on product development until a market emerges, said Jeff Clowers, token-ring switching product line manager. And 3Com Corp. last week played up its ability to transmit token-ring frames at 100M bit/sec over Fast Ethernet using the IEEE 802.1Q VLAN standard, a method that's virtually identical to Cisco's.
''We're looking at how we can help customers migrate their networks into the future to take advantage of other technologies, mainly Ethernet and Fast Ethernet, which everybody understands is probably 1/3 of the price of most token-ring infrastructures,'' said Ed Harper, a 3Com product line manager.
Conversely, IBM, Madge, Olicom and Xylan are actively developing HSTR-compliant products, officials from those companies said. IBM is developing 100M bit/sec token-ring network interface cards for release in the third quarter, and modules for the 8260, 8265 and 8270 hubs and switches for early 1999, said Dave Olechovsky, token-ring product line manager at IBM and HSTRA chairman. Madge said it will show HSTR switches and adapters at Networld+Interop 98 next month in Las Vegas and ship these products by year end.
Aside from Olicom, HSTRA members largely shrugged off Cisco's defection.
''I hate to see them drop out because they've been helpful,'' Olechovsky said. ''But as we've all seen with alliances, people come and people go and I think they just decided it's not a time to be part of the alliance.''
Olechovsky said Cisco did not try and force ISL upon the alliance: ''They were really very helpful in terms of us pursuing a native (token-ring) standard'' as well as an encapsulated approach like ISL, he said.
''I don't think (Cisco's withdrawal) will have any impact on the alliance whatsoever,'' said Sharon Wilber, vice-chair of the alliance and director of business relations at Madge. ''You still have the majority of the token-ring vendors in the alliance.''
Indeed. Of the $141.8 million in worldwide switched token-ring revenue for 1997, Bay, Madge, Xylan and IBM accounted for 66% of the market, according to the Dell'Oro Group of Portola Valley, Calif. Cisco had a 10.6% share, while HSTRA members Olicom and 3Com Corp. grabbed 7.6% and 5.5%, respectively.
Cabletron Systems, Inc., which owns 9% of the switched token-ring market, helped form the HSTRA but apparently never joined (NW, Sept. 1, 1997, page 40). The company backed out of the Alliance for Strategic Token-Ring Advancement and Leadership - ASTRAL - a year ago, a Cabletron spokesman said.
Cisco is the second company to defect from the HSTRA. Texas Instruments, Inc. bolted last fall (NW, Oct. 6, 1997, page 38). Cisco also snubbed the Network Interoperability Alliance, formed by IBM, Bay and 3Com, due to lack of demand (NW, May 5, 1997, page 1).
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