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

To: James Fulop who wrote (8974)	5/23/2000 2:18:00 PM
From: James Fulop	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 12623

EdgeDirector conversations going on over at Yahoo...here is one post... >>Edge Director I think stumbled in one of 2 areas. First, it was a CIEN centric view of what was necessary at a point in time when the industry was in ferment and that view has become a minority view with all the new technologies being injected into the discussion. Second, Edge Director is an expensive product and the possible customers (i.e. ISPs) are cash poor and are looking for vendor financing of their purchases. For CIEN to continue to push that product, they would have to finance those ISPs. If they decide to wait for the ISPs to grow up, by then the EdgeDirector would be ancient history any way. By pushing it strongly right now, down the road they will have the maintenance costs of a low volume highly complex product to deal with. I think the big question for us to be asking is what is the CIEN strategy for metro distribution going forward. We can try to do a post-mortem but we lack much of the info to get to a rational conclusion. But we can focus on what the company plans to do in the metro market. That is the key for investment. Are they focusing primarily on the long haul market and de-emphasizing metro?? If so, that is the path to becoming a niche player. On the other hand, they may have a newer concept product base, that will fill the hole coming. If they have no clear cut answer, then the future will look more and more like a very profitable niche player. In that case, I think the best exit scenario is a buyout. Right now, I am mostly in favor of their staying independent and becoming the #2 in optical networking across the board. But if they cant compete in metro, then they will invariably become a niche player.<< messages.yahoo.com