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Strategies & Market Trends : Gorilla and King Portfolio Candidates -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mr.Fun who wrote (3175)	6/26/1999 2:02:00 PM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 54805

Mr. Fun, To add to what you've stated, CSCO and most other other vendors of enterprise LAN devices face some grueling problems in the VoIP LAN space. This is an area where they'd like to think they hold an edge which could be leveraged for penetration deeper into the core, thuse supplanting the rule of the legacist incumbents. Sounds good, but it's not all peaches and cream, we're finding out. Their own devices in that space, however, namely their hubs and switches, are unable to uniformly address and cope with prioritization and QoS issues. On a single segment, fine. But not in cascading situations, where most voice calls go. And this doesn't even begin to address the issues in the WAN portion of IP Tel links. The latter [LAN and WAN] issues are crucial in order to assure commercial grade quality voice in the face of normal data (read: large file extensions, and other forms of bandwidth consuming payload-) activity. This is the first issues I'll address in this post. This does not portend well for CSCO's Selsius IP PBX switch rollouts, to say the least. The best short description of this problem that I have come across recently, concerning what "all" VoIP-in-the-LAN vendors will face, is highlighted by David Passmore in an article in the June issue of BCR, in case you are interested. [BTW, this article isn't posted on their web site - bcr.com - yet. Give it a couple more weeks. BCR still does business that way.] This is important from a strategic standpoint because it demonstrates some of the hurdles that face CSCO if they were depending on infiltrating the voice space from their position of of power. And that is, namely, that of the Enterprise TCP/IP LAN/WAN. The second issue I'd like to address follows. Working the other way (in the opposite direction)we see LU backtracking their softswitch vehicle into the loading dock named LVLT. Minimum $250MM, potential of >$1B. This occurrence, I will have to admit, is not something that I would have predicted. It was, I believe, more significant than most observers have come to realize or appreciate yet. The agreement between LU and LVLT, I believe, will only detract further from CSCO's erstwhile gains in the IP telephony realm, going forward. As I see it, CSCO will need to regroup around these two issues with a heightened sense of urgency if they truly intend to capture cross-domain share, as they've been boasting they would, for the past two years. Regards, Frank Coluccio

To: Mr.Fun who wrote (3175)	6/26/1999 3:08:00 PM
From: gdichaz	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 54805

To Mr.Fun: You clearly are an expert, so I would appreciate your informed view. I bought Cisco in 1990 and am very happy I did. It clearly developed into the gorilla in networking (altho early on Wellfleet looked more promising in the early 90's prior to its disasterous merger with Synoptics). Around the middle of the decade, it seemed to me that "networking" was too narrow a concept and that there was a convergence coming with the telecom equip suppliers such as LU and NT. So I bought them as a "base" for wireless and fiber equip supply. Qualcomm was my flyer in wireless and a little later UNPH in fiberoptics. All have done, and are doing, well. Right now do you see LU as the best bet among CSCO,LU and NT (altho you seldom even seem to consider NT a player at all)? Seems like that is your view. Do you suggest concentrating on LU period, or are you saying that in your view based on your knowledge and analysis, LU has the best shot at gorilladom in the emerging networking/telecom equip supply nexus? Cha2

To: Mr.Fun who wrote (3175)	6/26/1999 3:50:00 PM
From: Uncle Frank	Respond to of 54805

Mr.Fun, Another great analysis. Your first post was tasty but brief, so I felt I had to provoke you into making an expanded presentation <g>. No one has the total solution for voip, but lu and csco seem to be doing the best job of filling in the pieces. I'm pretty familiar with csco, since I make my livlihood by selling to them. What I like is their motivated organization and can-do attitude. I think their quickness will be an advantage over time. Imo, there will be no Gorilla in the sector, and probably not even a King, but there will be a several Princes with Attitude duking it out. Thanks for taking the bait <vbg> Frank

To: Mr.Fun who wrote (3175)	6/26/1999 4:38:00 PM
From: voop	Respond to of 54805

Cisco's acquisitions have begun to shore up some deficiencies, but they are a long, long way from being a player in anything other than IP routing and to a lesser extent, ATM switching, and high speed access technologies. For the real problem that carriers face - managing an increasingly complicated network - Cisco is a broken record. "Fork lift out the old world equipment, buy internet based equipment" . Carriers can't and won't do that - more than 90% of worldwide industry revenues come from voice carried over a trillion dollars of installed base Mr Fun and thread...would this not be the type of situation described by Clayton Christensen as a disruptive innovation whereby the entrenched legacy carriers will and can not untrench their copper; yet, the economics of voice over IP will reduce voice costs as to be an effective add-on to data delivery? Heck the Q has free long distance (only charges are preset monthly fees) when calls are made within the digital network...why call long distance on a wired phone? voop

To: Mr.Fun who wrote (3175)	6/27/1999 1:13:00 PM
From: Uncle Frank	Respond to of 54805

Mr.Fun, the investing style of this thread leans towards emerged Gorillas and Kings, like lu, csco, msft, etc., but the Holy Grail of the Gorilla Hunter is an young Gorilla. We think we may have found one with Qualcomm, though there is a long way to go before our classification can be confirmed. Since there is clearly going to be convergence between wired and wireless systems with the advent of the 3G standard, qcom's strong ipr positon on cdma technology may be a factor in influencing the fortunes of lu and csco as well as the wireless carriers and consumers. Do you have any insights into this upcoming shift that you could share with us? Once again, feel free to drop by here anytime. We'll give you all the bandwidth you want <g>. Frank