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Technology Stocks : Ciena (CIEN) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: cfoe who wrote (8073)	2/18/2000 7:12:00 AM
From: James Fulop	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 12623

>>There was a question about the demand for optical switching (championed by Gilder). The responder (and I do not know who) first made a somewhat (to me) derisive comment about certain technology pundits. I took this to be a swipe at Gilder, although I have been known to be a bit sensitive in this area. The speaker then went on to say something even more concerning - that they do not see any demand from their customers for products that bring what optical switching can bring. Now I have been studying Christensen's Disruptive Innovation stuff this past year and I can tell you that companies that say this are ripe for disruption.<< I could be totally off base here, but I thought that part of the call was concerning not optical switching itself but "pure" optical switching as opposed to the present e-o-e conversion systems now actually being used. This issue has been debated a lot over on Frank C.'s thread here on SI and seems there is a lot of confusion on the semantics as some companies (and people such as Gilder) claim it is already being used, while others claim that those systems are really only pseudo pure optical switching. I remember seeing an article about this purity vs pseudo optical issue that sums it up nicely-I'll look for it today and post it when I can. Regards

To: cfoe who wrote (8073)	2/18/2000 7:31:00 AM
From: James Fulop	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 12623

Ooops-the edit window closed on me before I could finish: I believe the person from Ciena was just saying that their e-o-e systems were selling well despite the claims of "pure" networking solutions being advertised as the great disruptive new technology. Regards

To: cfoe who wrote (8073)	2/18/2000 5:43:00 PM
From: Daniel G. DeBusschere	Respond to of 12623

The CC call comments on optical vs O-E-O market demand - I heard the same comment and along with the comment that OC-48 was still the heavy mover, I thought - wait a minute who's credible LU or CIEN? - this was an immediate disconnect. Here is my rationalization of these comments. There are two classes of telecom service providers: (1) Those with a substantial investment in SONET (i.e. read OC-48), and (2) Those that do not have a substantial investment in SONET and SONET experienced network staff. The latter category is much smaller than the former but these are the players that are interested in non-SONET (i.e. read OC-192) infrastructure buildouts. As soon as these non-SONET players start taking business from the SONET players, then the game is over. It may take a while, that's what the SONET suppliers hope for. The bandwidth on demand capability will most likely be the killer app. (IMHO)