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Technology Stocks : Cisco Systems, Inc. (CSCO) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RetiredNow who wrote (29923)	12/2/1999 10:18:00 PM
From: Eric	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 77400

Cisco has some time to decide on this one. There are so many parallel solutions that it will take some time to decide on the best solution going forward. There's still a lot of dark fiber around so I understand why they are waiting. Reminds me of the gigabit ethernet situation when they decided the market was not quite ripe to enter. Gotta hand it to Chambers and his marketing and engineering group.....They strike at just the right moment!

To: RetiredNow who wrote (29923)	12/2/1999 10:58:00 PM
From: telecomguy	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 77400

With all due respect, Cisco admitted that they have no strategy right now. The only thing they are capable of doing is waiting for an optical switching company to buy. In the public network, waiting for technology to develop & then "buying" a R&D company is not going to work like it did in the Enterprise market I am afraid. The fact of the matter is that PTT's and Carriers go through extensive testing, beta & co-development with vendors like NT & LU LONG BEFORE they put out the official buy decision in the Public Release. By the time you hear about the contract win, EVERYONE in the business already knows who is likely to get the contract! Cisco I am afraid has a long way to go to understand that in the PTT market, product is only one part of the buying decision -- and even in the product category, Cisco is behind as they themselves admitted. PTT/public network market could become Cisco's Waterloo if they don't understand what it takes to compete with NT & LU and unlike the enterprise router market, the customers in the public network market do not easily forget screw ups and poor implementation -- because of the obvious huge costs such snafu's cause. If Cisco is betting it's hard-earned retained earnings by diluting their equity base and paying exorbiant amount of money to buy what is essentially an untested,undeveloped R&D experimental companies, there will be a price to pay and that price may ultimately be the demise of once & current great company. How many times have I seen a company who suceeds in one market and believes that they can just as easily conquer the next market -- not realizing the world-apart difference in competition and success drivers between the $20K router market and $100 million toll quality network switching market! I see in Cisco a very successful company in enterprise data products flying too close to the sun (like Icarius) and it would not surprise me to see them fall very quickly when their ambitions & over-reaching come back to haunt their bottom line as they bang their head against a door that is elusively shut to Product oriented companies like Cisco. You see, the difference between Cisco and NT/LU is that the latter are completely vertical companies in network infrasture world (R&D, implementation, integration, support, maintenance, applications, etc.) while the former is more of product packaging company -- a very successful one at that I must admit. Comparing Cisco to NT/LU is like comparing NT to Mitel. Mitel is a voice enterprise product company........it is not network build-out company and once you start to understand the difference, you will start to understand why despite spending billions in acquiring Cerent, Monterey, etc. Cisco is not winning PTT contracts. I see on this board, too much pre-occupation with product but in fact that's not where it's at when it comes to which vendor wins in the PTT market.......the sooner Cisco understands this the sooner they will re-evaluate and possibly walk away from the public network infrastructure market. I own NT and not Cisco for these reasons and although I hope everyone wins (and short term -- everyone will win), in the long-term, Cisco's all-or-nothing strategy to fight to the death against NT,LU, ERICY, Siemens, Alcatel to name a few, will be their Waterloo.