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Technology Stocks : SDL, Inc. [Nasdaq: SDLI] -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Curtis E. Bemis who wrote (2554)	8/12/2000 3:22:11 PM
From: pat mudge	Respond to of 3951

From SDLI's May 10 PIRI acquisition press release: About PIRI PIRI, formed in 1987 by NTT Corporation, Mitsubishi Corporation and Battelle, who together with Mitsubishi International Corporation are the current shareholders, is the leading supplier of AWG products and silica waveguide technology used in fiber optic mux/demux products. PIRI also offers a line of other products including thermo-optic switches used in optical add/drop multiplexers, thermo-optic based variable optical attenuators (VOAs) used in gain equalization, and optical splitters used for distribution of the optical signals. PIRI's products are applicable to the undersea, long haul and metro markets. I recall asking Don Scifres about the acquisition while at the annual meeting and he said they'd been developing a relationship with PIRI's Japanese holders for quite a long time. Acquisitions like this don't happen over a glass of wine and handshake. It's more akin to marrying off your first-born. :) Pat

To: Curtis E. Bemis who wrote (2554)	8/16/2000 2:01:24 PM
From: pat mudge	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3951

Quote of the Day: “We’re well past the point of ‘If I build it, they will come,’ to ‘Oh my God, they just keep coming.’” Michael O’Dell, chief scientist for UUNet. The following is posted with apologies to the old NN gang who remember Cambrian with a certain amount of pain. Investors Business Daily Cambrian Unit Made Certain Nortel Didn’t Gag On 10 Gigs By Mike Angell It doesn’t seem to make much sense when an optical communications start-up garners a billion-dollar market cap on the stock market before it’s sold a single product. But you need only look back a few years to see what payoffs can occur with well-timed investments. In 1998, Nortel Networks Corp. bought fiber-optic start-up Cambrian Systems fro $300 million. In just the last two months, Nortel has sold over $4 billion in optical transmission gear. Man of these products use Cambrian technology. Cambrian’s complex software and hardware are referred to as metropolitan network products because they speed data from businesses and homes to the backbones --- long-distance fiber-optic networks. That purchase by Nortel also brought it Cambrian founder and CEO Don Smith. As Nortel’s president of optical Internet since December 1998, he’s kept Nortel the leader in sales of optical gear. In particular, Nortel has soundly beaten archrival Lucent Technologies Inc. in seeing the move to networks that can zoom data at 10 gigabits per second, rather than 2.5 gps. The 10 gps pipe is fast enough to handle the high-speed Internet connections of 6 million households at one time. Smith recently spoke with Investor’s Business Daily about Nortel’s optical strategy. IBD: How did Nortel see the need for 10 gigabit fiber-optic gear? Smith: Nortel made a decision in 1993 that 10 gigabit would be important. In fact, we first showed 10 gigabit at a trade show in Geneva in 1995. We started to ship in 1996. At that time, some customers would ask why 10 gigabits? Our competitors felt that the sweet spot was 2.5 gigabits. IBD: What’s the next speed? Smith: In 1999, we showed 80 gigabit systems, saying that we would produce that in 2001. Early in June, Qwest announced that they had completed a trial with Nortel’s 40 gigabit system. That proves we’re moving forward to introduce the 80 gigabit as we said we would. IBD: So networks will skip 40 gigabits and go straight to 80? Smith: Michael O’Dell, chief scientist for (WorldCom’s Internet provider unit) UUNet, said to me we’re well past the point of ‘If I build it, they will come,’ to ‘Oh my God, they just keep coming.’ If I know how to make more bandwidth available, I probably ought to have the plans in place to do that. IBD: What drives this demand? Smith: The goal is the lowest cost per managed gigabit per mile. IBD: What are those costs? Smith: The cost per managed gigabit per mile has come down about 99% in the last decade. We’re not backing off in terms of further reductions. There’s a very nice elasticity of demand. For every dollar reduction, demand increases four or five times. IBD: What will that do to growth? Smith: Over the next four years, the (Internet’s) bandwidth needsto grow about 100 to 200 times. There’s been a lot of talk about (boosting speeds of the Internet’s) backbone, but this (need for much faster speed) includes (other) areas. Remember, this bandwidth starts and stops at businesses and consumers and wireless sites. We’ll see as much change in the metropolitan market (connections from backbones to users) as we’ve been seeing in the backbone. IBD: Cambrian brought a metropolitan product to Nortel. How are sales doing? Smith: We grabbed 71% of the metro market (last year a mere $53 million market, according to research firm the Dell’Oro Group). We announced a win for a European metro network with Global Crossing, reaching 40 cities. We didn’t announce a value, but analyst reports valued the deal at about $500 million. IBD: What’s your opinion of metro fiber-optic start-ups that promise to do all this high-speed data transmission from one box? Smith: One approach in metro is that we have a cohesive solution that’s built on a portfolio of products. I’m not a believer in the all-in-one God box. If it’s meant to be good at every last thing, it probably won’t be best in breed at any one thing. When we look at different business models of our customers, we need to provide the best cohesive solution. And it’s built on our portfolio. If you want best-in-class in every last thing, which customers want, designing one box that can deliver on that is very tough to do. It’s like designing by committee. We’re focused on best-in-class on the significant building blocks and integrating them for customers. To the customer, it’s one solution. IBDIs Nortel working on all-optical networks? Smith: We’re seeing the emergence of (all-optical) wavelength-managed services. As customers see a need to change their networks, our products will be there. We’re doing trial runs later this year on (all-optical products) which will be available next year.