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

To: Daniel G. DeBusschere who wrote (9396)	7/27/2000 8:01:11 PM
From: jghutchison	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 12623

Hi Daniel, I know little of Agilent other than it was a spin off of Hewlett-Packard's optical test instruments group. (Plus other things as well.) I understand that their earnings were a disappointment, and the stock got whacked big time. It is now selling for 25% of its record March high. You can check out the fundamentals on stocksheet.com, and multexinvestor.com. The current 40 dollar level is equal to the November lows after the IPO, which was very successful. So technically speaking, this is a strong support level. (The Naz is also sitting on support.) The Agilent optical switch caught the attention of a lot of folks. I believe the simplicity of the device, plus its proven ink-jet bubble technology, make MEM's switches look like a kludge by way of comparison. I think that it would be safe to assume that Ciena has received and tested Agilent's switch, and MEM's switches as well, to determine if they fit in with Ciena's design approach, and if nothing else, to see how well the competition fares. For the time being, and the foreseeable future, the CoreDirector, which is based upon ASIC design, offers very attractive features at resonable pricing, with a high degree of scalability (number of ports) and speed (10G now, 40 G in the pipeline). There are many things that can be done with an electronic fabric that cannot be accomplished optically. Multiplexing and grooming, for example. Electronics are not going to go away. Those MEM's rely on electronic signals to tilt the mirrors. Besides, you can't put a box full of photons in your pocket, and store them away until needed as one typically does with electrons. To my knowledge no one has invented the photon equivalent of the DRAM chip as yet. For more information, you may also want to check out Agilent's home page. Best, Jack