Ascend Attacks The Growing Market For Private Networks
Date: 5/4/98
Author: Michele Hostetler
Ascend Communications Inc. is staking its claim Monday in the potential gold mine of virtual private
networks.
The networking company is unveiling a host of products that lets companies ship private data over the
public Internet. It plans to start selling the products this summer.
In making its move, Ascend is taking on the biggest makers of networking gear: Cisco Systems Inc.,
Bay Networks Inc. and 3Com Corp. Shiva Corp. is another rival in the VPN market.
''VPNs today present a huge opportunity,'' said Kurt Bauer, Ascend's vice president of access product
management.
Companies use VPNs to ship data and tie together far-flung offices. Internet service providers and
telecommunications companies also are VPN buyers, using the technology to create and manage
wide-area networks for their corporate customers.
The Alameda, Calif.-based company calls its products MultiVPN. In the crowding VPN field, the
products will help Ascend ''get back in the game'' against the likes of Cisco and Bay, says Michael
Howard. He's chief executive of market researcher Infonetics Research Inc. in San Jose, Calif.
''We are extremely well positioned against Cisco . . . and Bay,'' Ascend's Bauer said. ''We defer to no
one.''
VPNs are part of the remote-access-equipment market. The VPN segment is still so small that market
researchers don't track it separately. Worldwide sales of remote-access equipment should reach $4.2
billion this year, up from $3.2 billion last year, says International Data Corp., a market researcher in
Framingham, Mass.
Ascend also will reveal its plans to put VPN technology into all of its products. And it will make sure
that VPN technology works with the asynchronous transfer mode and frame relay technologies it got
from its purchase of Cascade Communications Corp. last year. Like the Internet, ATM and frame
relay are ways to send data over wide areas.
''This is the first time that Ascend and Cascade are able to plug in together,'' Bauer said. ''Everyone
else has focused just on the Internet with VPN. No one has said it's also frame relay and ATM.''
Ascend already is one of the largest sellers of switches and other networking products to ISPs and
telecom companies. Now, these customers will have another reason to buy Ascend gear, Howard
says.
MultiVPN includes Ascend's year-old IP (Internet Protocol) Navigator software and uses it to its full
capabilities for the first time, Howard says.
IP Navigator helps different Ascend equipment work together. That's another key aspect to Ascend's
VPN push.
''I think Ascend has, to date, spelled out a more coherent strategy than its competitors,'' said IDC
analyst Rick Villars. ''I think of all the vendors, they're the ones trying to tell a single story.''
The major VPN challenge for networking companies is to get products to work with other products, he
says.
''Ascend wants its customers to have only Ascend products, but to keep growing it has to get into a
heterogeneous environment,'' Villars said.
One of Ascend's new products is Navis Customer Network Management. The software lets ISPs
view and control their VPN from a computer.
And Navis Service Level Agreement is software that helps track network performance.
Other products include Virtual Private Remote Networking software. It helps customers create VPNs
using different types of systems.
Virtual Private Trunking helps guarantee bandwidth during heavy network traffic. Virtual IP Routing
helps companies do such things as keep their internal electronic-mail addresses even when relaying
messages over the Internet.
(C) Copyright 1998 Investors Business Daily, Inc. |
