Gary,
Thanks for your comments. When did CSCO take out STRM? I had thought that it was in 1995.
My only thought on why STRM failed to maintain leadership is that it was a symptom of a bigger company sitting on past success and not keeping up with the pace of new products generated by the start-ups, ie CSCC. If they sat back and looked as CSCO and their enterprise expertise and essentially cashed out, then shame on them. Perhaps CSCO should have let the "gang" at STRM do their thing.. CSCO might have had the ability to dominate that space had STRM stayed current. CSCO faces the same issue now with companies like Juniper et al coming along. If they continue to sit back on older architecture, they will face stiffening competition even with their market dominance. I am pro CSCO, but acquiring and piece-mealing product lines has its' drawbacks. I am not saying that they will not continue to dominate but rather that they need to be careful not to assume that the CSCO name alone will win them every deal.
Regarding this "culture issue". Quite frankly, I believe it to be crap. The culture issue is between the old CSCC guys and the ASND west coasters. That is why Desh, Dan, Ahsan, Chi and a host of others fled the building. The west coast ASND attitude did not ingratiate itself in the least here. CSCC is in the east. LU is in the east. We all know that the "jewel" of ASND for LU is CSCC. the people there could not be happier than to have an east coast company with the managment credentials of LU back in charge. The CSCC people have been treated as outcasts for the past 2 years. If they had not still had some reasonable stock options in place, my guess would have been that the damage could have been irreparable. Granted, there will be a west coast guy heading the division, but he will be here, in the east. If anything, the progress of new product introduction, new architectures, etc will accelerate under this change.
You can't blame Chambere for spreading rhetoric, but it gets a little old after you read the same thing 3-4 more times with no substance behind it.
My feeling is that LU needs to ante up for a juniper (they were apparently outbid on Redstone, per published reports.) If they do this then they will truly be a powerhouse.
Long LU/CSCO.
Regards,
Brian |
