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

To: 100cfm who wrote (15139)	1/14/2000 12:46:00 PM
From: konabound	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 54805

My company is involved in Building Automation integration. Lonworks of course is very strong in that market but certainly would not say that they have "crushed" Bacnet. As in many cases it depends on which side of the fence you are on. Lonworks people feel they have crushed Bacnet and Bacnet people feel they are the force beating Lonworks and of course the answer is in the middle. Both tend to have their own rose colored glasses, much like many people I have seen on the various threads of SI. I am sure that even my own viewpoint has some bias, but we sell products for both Lonworks and Bacnet and others so I try to see both sides. Most of the major building automation firms such as Honeywell, Trane, Johnson Controls, and Siemens accept both Lonworks and Bacnet (and in some cases other protocols too), just so they can cover all their bases. Siebe focuses on Lonworks but also use gateways to Bacnet for the customers that want Bacnet. Others such as Alerton, Automated Logic, etc are only Bacnet. Carrier, Cleaver Brooks, and many others still focus on their own proprietary protocols and use gateways to interface to Lonworks or Bacnet. The smaller devices in the buildings such as theromostats (small in size but large in number) do tend to follow Lonworks because the chip is installed, but larger devices such as chillers, variable frequency drives, etc tend to have more powerful microprocessing capability and can do both but have tended to be Bacnet or their own proprietary protocol. They also use gateways to link to Lonworks. In the home automation market with their links to Cisco, sun, and microsoft it might be a different story. I see ELON right now in two similar but different markets, building (meaning commercial type structures) and home. Building automation is still their major market. For home automation it is still all in its infancy but lots of noise being made now. And of course their new iLON appears to be a great product. As to whether or not ELON is gorilla or king potential? I have no idea, just finished tfm and learning gg myself now with the help of uf and others. I certainly don't think that a two week rise in price tied to ces announcements qualifies as a tornado. But I certainly agree that ELON is a stock on my watch list. I have been involved with them from a product viewpoint for a while and only recently have started watching their financial performance. I guess sometimes you can be too close to a company to see what the stock can do, but I know I am starting to keep an eye on them now.

To: 100cfm who wrote (15139)	1/15/2000 7:33:00 AM
From: blan	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 54805

Re: elon I think there are two sides to this coin worth looking at -- the "smart home" and the "smart factory." The industry and/or military applications of Lon Works would probably ramp up first and faster and offer more revenues, but the consumer side will draw the headlines -- a powerful combination should this field develop into a full-fledged tornado. Elon's vision is an intriguing one and worth watching, imho. My concerns when I looked them over some time ago were 1) vague revenue streams, 2) the lack of apparent broader applications for industry other than the one or two being touted, and 3) tornado very distant. On the other hand, one of the many satisfying points of gg is the time frame: should elon show gorilla tendencies, there will be plenty of time to jump on board. Q: Does anyone know if Cisco, an early supporter of elon, is using Lon Works in their "home routers" or any of their other home products?