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Technology Stocks : MRV Communications (MRVC) opinions? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: cmg who wrote (14955)	8/9/1999 10:45:00 PM
From: Sector Investor	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 42804

<<How again is mrvc attacking this market?>> Nbase-Xyplex has the world's only hardware router with Linux Software. This allows a completely "open" system - anyone can tailor or enhance any way they want to. They can make it work with ANY vendor's security software for example. Customer's have the maximum flexibility, options and choices. From the way they are playing this up, there will probably be other Linux based products coming out as well. CSCO has to defend it's proprietary IOS so it is not about to do much here, other than try to tweek IOS a bit. The bottom line is MRVC has a good chance to differentiate themselves - and differentiation means they can have higher margins and keep them high for quite a while, because if people want an Open System router, we are "it" for now. Remember also that a base or "typical" price here is $300,000. Let's see: even a 50% margin (I bet it is higher) is $150,000 profit. After fixed overhead costs are accounted for (the rest of MRVC's sales do that) each 1 cent on EPS is about $270,000, so sales of TWO LINUX ROUTERS should add a penny to EPS. How many do you think Nbase-Xyplex can sell? The answer could be "lots". Please check my math, but I think you'll see why we are all excited about this.

To: cmg who wrote (14955)	8/9/1999 10:57:00 PM
From: signist	Respond to of 42804

s It Time for Linux? by Greg Shipley (05/31/99; 9:00 a.m. ET) Network Computing You've heard the stories about Linux at major companies, medium-sized cities and even at NASA. You've read about its use in bizarre clusters that outperform Cray supercomputers. You've seen the manifestation of its computational power in movies like Jurassic Park and Titanic. You have friends who swear by it, and maybe some fellow managers who curse at the very mention of its name. And over the past 12 months, you've witnessed Apple, Computer Associates, Compaq, Corel, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Informix, Intel, Lotus, NAI, Netscape, Novell, Oracle, SAP and Sybase launch support for what appears to be the world's fastest-growing OS. But there's still a question with no obvious answer: Is Linux right for your enterprise? Over the past year we've been working to address this issue. We've conducted in-house lab tests, hounded vendors, interviewed CIOs and kept a hand on the pulse of the Linux community. We've been watching, testing, logging and inquiring about the use of Linux in corporate environments. Our findings? Not only is Linux ready for the enterprise, it currently occupies the enterprise-but not in the manner you might expect. Linux is not powering Oracle databases yet. It doesn't drive the financial services, and it usually doesn't sit at the heart of all system deployments. Instead Linux currently serves as the Swiss Army knife of networking. In many ways, it's a stable version of what NT aspires to be. Linux has been creeping in from the bottom up-introduced by engineers to solve esoteric tasks in a hurry. From there, it has grown to house printing systems, support custom manufacturing systems, perform traffic graphing and analysis, support custom intranet applications, and function as a platform for Web and e-mail gateways. Recently, Linux has begun making power moves into areas traditionally reserved for other OSes. Organizations have begun considering Linux for their large-scale Web, database, and file- and print-sharing needs. Science and engineering-related industries have begun replacing high-end Unix clusters with inexpensive but computationally superior Linux clusters. Why the sudden surge of interest? What has finally made Linux a credible corporate citizen? While we've had our eye on the Linux phenomenon, we've suffered through the same problems corporate America has faced: no 24x7 support, no drivers for storage and network devices, no support by major server vendors, and lack of vendor participation in the large-scale DBMS (database management system) arena. But real solutions to many of these hurdles now exist. more planetit.com