re: "Did Redback acquire some new technology with its acquistion of Siara?"
Ken, aside from some new age music which plays on their Macromedia presentation on their web site, I don't think so. Although the music itself might be worthy of a Grammy Award.
[Begin Sidebar: The opening moments of one of these web site Macromedia presentations --I can't recall if it was the Redback or the Siara one (so much for first impressions on a grand scale, eh?)-- reminded me of how today's boxers now come out of their dressing rooms, rap music blasting and lights flashing. Both RB and Siara put a lot into those presentations, and they look similar, to boot. Hmm... And all the while I was looking for a white paper which was hidden on another panel. My 15 year old daughter would smile at this and advise me to get with it, although I'm sure that she wouldn't use those words. I'm trying. End Sidebar.]
Yes, Siara probably has some new mousetrap method of transporting large payloads across distances, maybe in their management layer they have some proprietary hooks that make them different, in their own proprietary way. But they are still hauling SONET payloads for the most part. But so did NT/Passport, and ASND/GBX 550, etc. Did Siara bring anything earth-shatteringly new to the table? I cant find it, if they did. Unless you count the fact that they might now be able to seamlessly [no comment] combine their WAN solutions with Redback's dsl and cablemodem access management platforms.
At least that is the implied message at this point.
"What did Redback get for $4.3 billion and how will the Siara acquisition make Redback more competitive?"
Redback is primarily a subscriber access technology management and administration platform for orchestrating large numbers of end users in a geographic area amongst many different upstream providers, VPN networks, content providers, etc.
RB is a lot like the company that NT purchased recently called ________ who does the same thing. Help me out with the name here.. how quickly we forget.
Siara, on the other hand, is a multi-protocol (primarily Layers 1 and 2) networking and transport solution, capable of aggregating multiple forms of SONET, ATM, FR protocols (whhich are in turn "supportive' of IP when IP is superimposed on top of those protocols, including IP over Sonet, or POS) over greater distances.
Siara is, effectively, a WAN solution, whereas Redback handles the edge and access spaces. Siara and Redback meet at the edge, and it is assumed that this will give them end-to-end capabilities, the holy grail which is still sought by a large number of networking companies today.
I say holy grail when referring to end to end provision, but that was maybe being too kind. To think that one could even begin to suppose that they could provide an e-to-e solution today for the majority of opportunities that exist, is to stick your head so far into the sand that perhaps you will wind up selling your goods in China, where, in fact, there may still be a market for e-to-e today. But even there, multi-provider inter-networking will become the order of the day. And whenever you run across multiple providers in an inter-networking venue, you are certain to find yourself in a multi-vendor environment, as well.
It requires a certain form of denial to think in terms of e-to-e provisioning today, given the diffusion that has taken place in the 'net and the number of providers that it takes to make the 'net work on all cylinders.
And yet, maybe there is something to e-to-e provisioning, after all, when you consider the need for SLAs in some emerging venues. One such application might be when you have a multifaceted ASP [who not only does application serving but also does hosting] and they are contracted to provide enterprise applications all the way to the desktop across broad geographic reaches. Here, it's conceivable that a large carrier teaming with the ASP might put in place an end to end seamless solution to satisfy a Merrill Lynch's, say, or a GE's requirements. And once that capability is in, then they could spread it to other enterprises rather easily. Maybe this is the idea behind GTE's using them (Redback, that is).
Anyway, the name of their strategy behind this merger is gestalt. They are hoping that by combining the long haul technologies of Siara with the subscriber access management systems of Redback, 1+1 will eventually = 3.
Okay, so I may seem fickle. First I say that the e-to-e application is not plausible, and then I give you an example of how it might be applied. It's taking me some time to adjust to the fact that the 'net is doing a subtle form of pullback, into a growing number of areas where private-line like provisions must prevail in order to keep service levels up. Or, at least these are the means by which some solutions providers see an expedient end to that problem.
The one I cited above is but one case where determinism and dependability are mandatory and where virtual private links are being used, outside the reach of the greater 'net.
Besides, I find that being fickle allows me to play the devils advocate against myself, and this is also a good way to spark discussion and ultimately learn something.
Comments welcome.
Regards, Frank Coluccio |
