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Technology Stocks : Cisco Systems, Inc. (CSCO)

CSCO 76.39

+0.5%

10:39 AM EST

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To: Frank A. Coluccio who wrote (22927)	2/22/1999 12:09:00 AM
From: Joe S Pack	Read Replies (1) of 77400

Frank, This my view on "intelligence at the edge" philosophy. This view is based on the analogy that I draw from computer evolution. In the beginning there was a mainframe and world was concentrated at the center. Some smart(?) guy at the leading mainframe vendor in 60's theorized that computer will be very expensive for ordinary folks and only evolutionary path should be followed is to enlarge machines and attach hundreds of remote terminals and then rent the terminals. What they failed to see was how technology will evolve and make that notion ridiculus after 25 years. The computer took an evolutionary path from mainframe to minis to pc to handhelds. Of course there are business situations where main frame make much sense. But even in those environment the configurations are drastically different than the original model. So what happened within the past 25 years on computer front is a history replete with technology than status quo and so called business smarts. I envision the same evolutionary path on the communications infrastructure. So, more and more intelligence will migrate towards the edge. This evolution will be dictated not only by the technology in communication hardware/software but also to some extent by a lot intelligent and quality sensitive applications at the edge. For example if one wants a certain level of QoS for a particular application, requesting a certain route and QoS and if needed doing own scheduling at the edge may be much easier than having centralized schedular at the core. From business perspective such an evolutionary path will obviously put a lot of pressure on high-margin core players like CSCO. One open question is, can there be a single dominant player at all levels of hierarchy? Or Can there be a king, like Microsoft is for computers, at the edge of the network? Unlike in computer sphere where there was and still is no standard, these are some of the tough questions in an industry where standards still dominate. -Nat

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