Frank:
For what it's worth, I read through the press release and checked out the website. Inferno does indeed look like a possible threat to WIND, although as you articulate, WIND continues to draw on a diverse customer base. That's the good news.
The bad news is that Inferno seems to be duplicating much of the strategy that WIND has been executing, namely an open platform that works on the full range of processors, including ARM, SPARC, MOTOROLA, HITACHI, and INTEL. I don't know how their toolset shapes up, nor how many partners are already included in their Inferno Partners Program. But, it does appear that given their history (after all Bell Labs developed UNIX and C++) as well as their current emphasis on network equipment, that they definitely have some technological expertise.
However, my instincts are also that Lucent's position may place them at a disadvantage, in many of the same ways that Allen has already articulated for SUN and the other chip makers. Lucent is a competitor with many of their clients on the chip side, and thus, many of their potential Inferno users might be skeptical about handing over dominance to both a hardware and a software maker. WIND seems to have an advantage in this arena, since they can continue to claim that they are a pure software provider, with none of the conflict of interests that the other hardware makers have.
These are just my preliminary thoughts. I am anxious to here what Allen has to say, as well as here who some of Lucent's customers are. Lucent has stated that they will make some announcements in the coming weeks.
Allen, any thoughts on this? I'd love to here anybody else's thoughts as well.
Regards,
Jason Cogan |
