Cascade is behind in both of these markets (ATM and Remote Access). First, the remote access Market, as far as service providers go Ascend and USRobotics have that market basically cornered. The number of viable ISPs who would need a large system, such as Casacde's AX or Ascend's TNT, or USR's Totall Control is not going to grow from where it is today, and all of those guys have made their decision who to go with a year ago. In this environment even Cisco has difficulty. But Cisco's system is still small enough for corporate customers, Cascade doesn't have a solution there. Then there are all sort of functionalities such as IP based VPN, etc that Casacde's software is just behind on. They made a wrong strategical choice not to get into this market earlier.
ATM, I hear Newbridge is making a lot of headway in the carrier market with their new switches, MainStreetXpress. They recently in a joint announcement with Siemens announced PSTN (SS7 signaling ) functionality on their system. This is means, Newbridg's switch can be used for terminating plain long distance phone calls directly in the ATM network. Cascade has not kept up with this and is well behind. As you all probably know there is this rumor Ascend could join Newbridge and Siemens and provide them with IP switching and remote access solution. This could make at least the next few quarter very though for Cascade, until they have some solutions that they could compete with.
On the bright side, there is talk that Cascade might team up with Lucent, if they pull that off that may put Cascade in a position to be able to compete seriously in the new application areas, voice and video. remember Lucent doesn't have a viable Frame Relay or ATM solution, Cascade could help them there.
Putting all of these in perspective, I think Cascade hasn't bottomed out yet. But, I don't think they would fall more than a few point, and then I think about the end of the year they'll be back to about 50-55.
Who knows about next year?! |
