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1997 PREDICTIONS -- What will 1997 bring? Cisco will buy five or six more companies. Ascend, Shiva, Fore Systems, 3Com, Cabletron and Bay Networks all will buy three or four companies. Lucent Technologies will continue to prove that AT&T Chairman Bob Allen had a great idea when he spun off the company. Freed from the burden of being AT&T's equipment arm, Lucent will continue to capture equipment contracts with domestic and international carriers. Rumors will continue to surface that Lucent will buy Bay Networks, Cascade Communications, Shiva, Ascend, Fore Systems and anybody else that makes equipment. Odds are that Lucent will stick to carrier equipment and bypass private networking gear entirely. Nortel, on the other hand, will be more opportunistic, as it demonstrated when it acquired Micom Systems, a supplier of low-end voice and data networking products. Industry revenue for 1997 will be $19 billion, up from $12 billion in 1996. In 1998, the growth should continue to $27 billion. [Communications Week, 1/6] |
