Marshall, I grasp the situation, and if I remember correctly I stated that comparing "total control" to D-mark was like comparing oranges to tangerines. "Total control" is a much more versatile and broad based product that supports many platforms and is even suitable for large corporate intranets. My point was that Franklin's D-mark was more ISP dedicated, seeing as how most ISP's are running Unix or NT, for their OS's.
In head to head performance benchmarking, I have no idea how they would stack up, who knows, possibly D-mark might outperform, due to less overhead. I am not saying that do, or even implying that they do, just that until benchmarking can be done, would we know. What we do know is that as it pertains to cost, D-Mark is considerably less, and even if it came up with less performance, $35k's worth of difference can buy a lot of consideration.
As for the path to free upgrades, that pertains to the chipset being upgradeable, the 56.6kb chip would still be a firmware upgrade, and I don't think that would be free with a wholesale cost of $75.00. But you are generally correct regarding the installed base of existing customers.
Where Franklin would come into play is for expansion of those existing ISP's as more and more customers place higher capacity constraints on their existing equipment, so it would be a cheap add-on. Also I had mentioned that USR's robust programing staff could expand their breadth of product offerings, by writing drivers for D-mark and being able to target smaller corporate accounts that just don't have the budget or need for such a high end product such as "Total Control".
Plus, I don't think Franklin would be foolish enough to sign an exclusive licensing agreement with anyone, especially knowing the upcoming demand cycle that we are about to enter.
RB |
