Steve,
Good post! See, you do better when you're ranting and
raving about technical aspects of the network sector. :-)
Keep ranting and raving!!
Couple of things I would add for further understanding,
and please correct me if I'm wrong.
1) Because LU, NT are becoming obsolete in a sense, that's
why they're trying to acquire companies in group 4.
2) CSCO as of late is being compared to group 1, and since
some of group one has had preannoucements, CSCO is being
lumped in with them. They eventually would like to take over
group 1's line of business, but they are essentially doing
the work of group 3 and 4 (and like you said, "suffering
a death of a thousand cuts". But they will be strong for
a while because they have that encumbent customer base,
similar to how IBM had theirs.
CSCO is not dumb, so I expect them to come up with adjustments.
One of them might be getting into the SME space (small and medium
sized enterprises) which is a big focus of COMS.
3) I thought you might talk about all these companies that
are "rumored" to buy COMS. As you said, COMS is very different
from the companies in their data networking sector, this
is no accident, it's been Eric B's strategy for a while.
So, to suggest buyouts by the companies you mentioned or
by companies outside even the group you mentioned is a royal
pain in the butt to the buyer. It's just not a "nice" solution
in anyway. I would appreciate it if there was some intelligent
talk about COMS merger rumors.
joe |
