Zbyslaw --
I'm glad you put the pieces together. One more kudo for TimeStep: BEL. I phoned NN after a Bell Atlantic press release mentioned IP-Sec and was told TimeStep was behind it. Of course, until there's a press release stating the fact, it has to remain conjecture.
Now, based on Juniper Network's IPO, I started thinking about valuations. If you're interested, follow along and correct me where I'm wrong:
1) Lucent pays $900 million for Nexabit:
news.fiberopticsonline.com
Nexabit's products are in beta ---
The NX64000 is in beta trials with several service providers, including Frontier Communications, Road Runner, and OneNet.
--- and to my knowledge they have no revenues.
2) Juniper Networks comes public and reaches a market cap of $4.6 billion by the close of the first day ---
cbs.marketwatch.com
---- based on $13.8 million in sales over the last 4 quarters and $49.8 million in losses:
sec.gov
We have incurred significant losses since inception and expect to continue to incur losses in the future. As of March 31, 1999, we had an accumulated deficit of $49.8 million. Although our net revenues have grown from zero in the quarter ended September 30, 1998 to $10.0 million in the quarter ended March 31,1999, we cannot be certain that our revenues will continue to grow, or that we will achieve sufficient revenues to achieve profitability. We have large fixed
expenses and we expect to continue to incur significant and increasing sales and marketing, product development and administrative expenses. As a result, we will need to generate significantly higher revenues to achieve and maintain profitability. . . .
Looking more closely, it's clear JNPR's M40 doesn't scale to terabit speeds and doesn't switch ATM:
data.com
Not only are they not profitable, but a number of competitors are biting at their heels:
But will carriers ultimately be won over by code—or capacity? Argon Networks Inc. (Littleton, Mass.), Avici Systems Inc. (Billerica, Mass), Ironbridge Networks Inc. (Lexington, Mass.), Nexabit Networks Inc. (Marlborough, Mass.), Netcore Systems Inc. (Wilmington, Mass.), and Pluris Inc. (Cupertino, Calif.) also plan to ship core routers this year, and all say they'll outgun Juniper on scalability and throughput. In fact, Argon says it can stack up to eight Juniper-sized devices for total throughput of 160 Gbit/s. But with its centralized routing engine, the M40 can't be stacked, and capacity is limited to 20 Gbit/s. Still, Juniper says larger editions of the M40 might very well be on the way. “Over time, both the capacity and the line rates are going to go up,” promises president and CEO Scott Kriens.
However:
Another potential problem for Juniper is that most carriers still favor ATM for their core networks, and the M40 doesn't perform ATM switching. Maybe that explains why the vendor is such a big player in the MPLS (multiprotocol label switching) working group of the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force). MPLS should eventually furnish QOS and traffic engineering for IP, which means it could become for carriers a viable alternative to ATM. “Juniper and Cisco are the two major vendors pushing MPLS,” says Ian Mashiter, vice president of marketing at Ennovate Networks Inc. (Boxboro, Mass.), which makes edge routers based on an early version of the spec.
Now, if Cisco is convinced MPLS is the holy grail, why are they buying TransMedia:
newsalert.com
Cisco plans to integrate TransMedia's ATM-based circuit switching and voice-over-packet technologies into Cisco's voice-over-packet product line, Mahant told Newsbytes.
Note the price:
Under the terms of the agreement, Cisco will exchange between and 3.85 million shares of its common stock for all outstanding shares and options of TransMedia. The $407 million figure is based on Cisco's June 16 closing stock price of $116.25.
3) Siemens buys Argon Networks for an estimated $300 million:
eetimes.com
Product announcement:
argonnetworks.com
In beta with IXC:
argonnetworks.com
Article noting status of Argon products:
telecoms-mag.com
4) Newbridge notations:
Job listings:
prodweb.newbridge.com
From the horse's mouth:
prodweb.newbridge.com
The 50 gigabit switch will support OC-48/STM-16 interfaces this year.
Going beyond 50 gigs, we will be introducing a 320 gigabit product in customer labs later this year. It is going to be very skinny on features and functions, but equipped with very, very fast pipes -- OC-48/STM-16 and OC-192/STM-64.
I'm not qualified to compare the 50/320 with other products coming on the market, so I hope those who are will step forward and contribute to the discussion. It seems fairly clear the gigabit products are more critical than terabit right now. And if I understand these products correctly, the 50/320 will blow Juniper out of the water once it's released.
Pat |
