Joe,
About a couple of years ago, Cascade announced an alliance with Seimens. Siemens was suppose to market 9000 and at the same time develop voice capability for both of the 9000 and the 500. That relationship didn't go well, it actually caused Siemens to move out of that relationship and move with Newbridge, that I think was less than a year ago. Well, where would Cascade go for Voice? Nortel or Lucent? Nortel is a competitor of them and they have developed development alliance with IBM on other complementory products, i.e. voice/data based CPE to go along with their switches. That leaves Cascade and Lucent out. The rumor surfaced then, and was in a datacomm magazine.
Logically it makes a lot of sense. All of that was about technical alliance. Given where Cascade is today, I doubt that someone at Lucent isn't thinking about take-over or merger. Remember 4-5 billion still is pocket change for Lucent, (that would put Cascade at 40-50/ share) and it would make them move right into Frame Relay, ATM market, which they have no presence in today. But, on the downside, the old AT&T never made a rational strategic decision, who knows what would happen. But the technical alliance seems plausible.
Thanks |
