To: Rupert who wrote (2618 ) 8/28/2000 12:38:55 PM From: Puck Read Replies (1) | Respond to What do you think of Epoch's thesis that focused service and connectivity providers will strip Exodus of its core business with complex customers like so many piranhas beginning late next year and that Exodus's increasing verticalness will become too great an encumbrance to permit it to adapt to changing competitive currents. I still don't see why Exodus's one-stop-shopping product model doesn't make sense, or why a re-balkanization of connectivity and services products will make life easier or better for complex customers, who will have to piece together these pieces of product for themselves, as they once did. It seems to me that Epoch's thesis is based upon the assumption that the new generation of horizontal business models that have popped up to attack Exodus's centralized model will necessarily succeed. In my opinion, their success is not intuitive (obvious), and Epoch's analysis provides no argument why this will be the case other than to declare it so. As far as Exodus's verticalness is concerned, Ms. Hancock has said publicly that their layering of services over their co-location platform was done so because of customer request, which doesn't sound like the negative development the Epoch analysts presume it is becoming. I was an AboveNet shareholder (and thus now a Metromedia Fiber shareholder) and believe that with 25% of Exodus's revenue coming from connectivity fees that it would sensible for Exodus to merge with Metromedia Fiber, as AboveNet did, in order to insulate itself from erosion of connectivity profit margins and to keep those connectivity revenues all in the family, so to speak.
