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Pastimes : Home on the range where the buffalo roam -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Boplicity who wrote (6956)	11/26/2000 1:06:11 PM
From: Walkingshadow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 13572

Greg, They the FED have single handedly smashed the nascent new economy under the misread of inflation that has been no where to be seen for years. I hope they replace them all soon. I wouldn't care what it did to the market short term. The FED has way too much power, the market is better suited at controlling the economy. I'm not so sure. I've read that just since September, overall forward earnings estimates have been revised downward from around 13% increase to around 10% increase. A credit tightening is certainly not the sole cause of this, and probably not even a major cause. In my view, the potential for a bubble developing in the stock markets was great, and bubbles when they burst wreak absolute havoc. Just look at Japan, for example, which has yet to even begin to recover----almost 15 years later. Or ask somebody who bought real estate in Southern California at the height of the real estate bubble in the mid to late 80s, some of whom have still not broken even. Earnings and the future prospects of earnings are the driving force which determines stock price in the medium and long term, and stock price will always regress towards valuations based on earnings expectations, New Economy be damned. The basic premise behind the New Economy which differentiated it from the Old Economy was that earnings growth expectations were gross underestimates secondary to the New Economy companies creating vast new markets, and the anticipated exponential expansion of existing markets. To the extent that this was perceived to be true (and I fully admit that I perceived it to be so), then just to that extent were stock prices driven up. Now, it appears increasingly evident that the basic premise was not really true, at least to the extent that initial perceptions believed it to be true, and so stock prices are adjusting to conform with perceptions which are more in accordance with reality. This once again highlights the dangers of extrapolation. Me, I'm haunted by the things I read and ignored all along the way, vis-a-vis every bubble is accompanied by the widespread misperception that this time things are fundamentally different, and that's why the principles of economics don't apply here. Greenspan may someday be considered something of a hero, if it turns out that he did indeed play a major role in inhibiting the development of an expansionist bubble whose collapse would be certain to have long term devastating effects. If the expectations of earnings growth going forward which fueled the explosion in the Nasdaq to reach the 5,000 level ever turn out to be realistic, the market will push Greenspan out of the way, and bid stocks accordingly. But I doubt that this will happen. In the medium term, with the prospects of recession looming ever larger, Greenspan will likely be the villain. But, if the scenario had played out under conditions of eased credit, then the Naz would likely be nearing 8,000 or 10,000 now, with greed rampant. Then, with everybody and their brother singing the praises of stocks, and even Joe Lunchbucket taking out a loan on the house, hocking everything and going into debt to buy stocks on full margin to get a piece of the "get rich quick" stock gold rush-----when economic realities finally forced a recession or slowdown, what might be the impact? And how long might that last? While the stock market crash of 1929 certainly did not cause the Great Depression, nevertheless the effects of the economic realities (i.e., impending depression) in the context of a market which was largely unchecked, and in which credit was loose and margins excessive, was such that recovery did not really occur until over a decade later, and might have been much longer had the powers that be not gotten us into World War II. I'd say Greenspan has noted well the lessons of history---and, of critical relevance, understands the value of discipline. Love him, hate him, whatever. At least Greenspan takes action based upon real data within the context of fundamental driving forces of economics----stock market be damned. And, I might not like it, but I can see from my own experience with this that I can be just as guilty of "irrational exhuberance" as the next guy, because I'm human, and therefore susceptible to the untoward and self-defeating effects of greed and fear---though most often I am unaware of this, much to my later dismay. So I am unknowingly in need of somebody or something which can bring my perceptions more in line with reality, though I kick and scream and call names all along the way. Don't get me wrong, I don't suggest that AG should be canonized saint, just that events have given me a better understanding of my own limitations. And, a better realization that my misperceptions are unconscious, and quite capable of being driven into regions which are just not based in reality by those old bugaboos, greed and fear---again, much to my eventual dismay. Given that, the worst thing for me in the long run would be for the markets to control or determine the economy, but its also thing I would want to happen.......but, there's my misguided self interest showing its face again. And though I've always resisted, I must admit that it has been invariably true that what I've needed has been discipline. My parents, teachers, and every authority figure in my life have been right all along. All JMVHO................. Regards, Walkingshadow

To: Boplicity who wrote (6956)	11/26/2000 5:04:58 PM
From: allen menglin chen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 13572

Greg, EMLX -- Exploring Fibre Channel Switching hmt.hoovers.com INRANGE Technologies (NASDAQ:INRG) designs, manufactures, markets and services switching and networking products for storage, data and telecommunications networks. The company's products provide fast and reliable connections among networks of computers and related devices. It serves Fortune 1000 businesses and other large enterprises that operate large-scale systems where reliability and continuous availability are critical. This is highlighted by the FC/9000, which is the flagship of INRANGE's IN-VSN product family. The company's FC/9000, with 64 ports, is arguably the largest storage network switch available that operates under the Fibre Channel communication standard. The FC/9000 provides a platform from which enterprises can build storage networks that can be used in systems where reliability and continuous availability are critical. INRANGE's products are designed to be compatible with various vendors' products and multiple communication standards and protocols. The company has installed its products at over 2,000 sites in over 90 countries. It distributes and supports its products through a combination of direct sales and service operations and indirect channels. The company also provides services such as consulting, network design, and disaster recovery. Its customers include American Express (AMEX), Cisco (CISCO), Lockheed Martin (LMT), and SunGard Data Systems (SDS). Former parent SPX, an electronics manufacturer, owns 90% of the company and controls 98% of the voting power. INRANGE Technologies filed regulatory documents on June 5 and went public on September 25 of this year. The offering was lead by Solomon Smith Barney, and co-managed by Bear, Stearns & Co. Inc., and Chase H&Q. The initial size of the offering was 7.7 million shares with the offering priced at $16 per unit, the high end of its expected debut range of $14 to $16. The stock opened at $36 and closed at $46.25 on the first day. The maximum offering value is $123.2 million, with 83.3 million post-IPO shares on offer. In the past decade, there has been a ten-thousand-fold increase in computer performance. At the same time, requirements are increasing for more robust, highly available, disaster-tolerant computing resources. Nevertheless, computing resources continue to be pushed to their limits, with performance problems often traceable to I/O subsystems that are struggling to keep pace. There are currently three technologies available to address this problem - the Small Computer Systems Interface, the highly popular technology better known as SCSI; the Serial Storage Architecture, a technology being championed by IBM; and Fibre Channel, a high performance interconnect that is gaining huge amounts of momentum with support from nearly every industry heavyweight. The Small Computer Systems Interface (SCSI) is an intelligent, parallel I/O bus on which various peripheral devices and controllers can exchange information. Designed over 15 years ago, SCSI is the oldest peripheral interconnect that is still in widespread use. Because of its longevity in the marketplace, the parallel SCSI interface enjoys a depth and breadth of products that exceeds that of any other I/O interface: SCSI disk drives, tape drives, optical disk drives (including CD-ROM, DVD, WORM, and magneto-optical), removable media disk drives (both rigid and flexible), RAID subsystems, scanners, printers, and plotters, are available from multiple sources. The large volume of the market and numerous vendors have created economies of scale that make SCSI one of the most affordable peripheral interconnect technologies. Although popular, one of the main drawbacks of SCSI has always been bus length limitations. Originally limited to six meters, the newer standards, with their faster transfer rates and higher device populations, place even more stringent limitations on bus length, unless expensive differential cabling or extenders are used. The limitations of SCSI in terms of bus speed, reliability, cost, and device count are leading systems and storage designers to look toward serial device interfaces. Featuring data transfer rates as high as 200 MB/sec., serial interfaces rely on point-to-point interconnections, rather than busses. Furthermore, serial designs decrease cable complexity, simplify electrical requirements, and increase reliability. SCSI's two chief serial-interface rivals are the Serial Storage Architecture (SSA) and Fibre Channel Arbitrated Loop (FC-AL). Serial Storage Architecture is a high-speed serial interface designed to connect data storage devices, subsystems, servers and workstations. SSA was developed and promoted as an industry standard by IBM, with the formal standardization process beginning in 1992. Currently, SSA is undergoing the approval process as an ANSI standard. Although the basic transfer rate through an SSA port is only 20 MB/sec., SSA is dual ported and full-duplex, resulting in a maximum aggregate transfer speed of up to 80 MB/sec. SSA connections are carried over thin, shielded, four-wire (two differential pairs) cables, less expensive and more flexible than the typical 50- and 68-conductor SCSI cables. SSA networks can be constructed using string, loop, or switched topologies. SSA loops can contain up to 126 devices. Devices are hot-pluggable, and some measure of fault tolerance exists because of the redundant connectivity inherent in a loop topology. In contrast to SCSI, which is bus-based and thus has a limit on the total length of all connections, the SSA distance limit is 25 meters per link, enabling devices in an SSA network to be separated by much larger distances than are possible on a SCSI bus. Despite its attempts to make SSA an industry standard, IBM has not had a lot of success at getting other companies to pay SSA anything more than lip service. At the present time, IBM is the only major disk drive manufacturer that is shipping SSA drives. The lack of industry support for SSA casts serious doubt on whether it will ever become a de facto standard, or whether it will remain, for all intents and purposes, a proprietary IBM technology. Fibre Channel is an industry-standard, high-speed serial data transfer interface that can be used to connect systems and storage in point-to-point or switched topologies. Fibre Channel Arbitrated Loop (FC-AL), developed with storage connectivity in mind, is a recent enhancement to the standard that supports copper media and loops containing up to 126 devices, or nodes. Like SSA, FC-AL loops are hot-pluggable and tolerant of failures. The FC standard supports bandwidths of 133 Mb/sec., 266 Mb/sec., 532 Mb/sec., 1.0625 Gb/sec., and 4 Gb/sec. (proposed) at distances of up to ten kilometers. Gigabit Fibre Channel's maximum data rate is 100 MB/sec. (200 MB/sec. full-duplex) after accounting for overhead. There are two industry associations promoting FC technology: the Fibre Channel Association (FCA) and the Fibre-Channel Loop Community (FCLC), the latter concerned specifically with FC-AL. The membership of the FCLC reads like a Who's Who in the systems, storage, and chip set industries, including such companies as Adaptec, Compaq, Data General, Digital Equipment Corporation, EMC, Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, IBM, Lucent, LSI Logic, Motorola, Mylex, Sun Microsystems, Symbios, and Texas Instruments. FC-AL disk drives are currently available from major players like Fujitsu, Quantum, Seagate, and Western Digital. Industry support for FC-AL has already reached critical mass, ensuring continuing innovation and lower prices through competition and economies of scale. Clearly, Fibre Channel has reached status as both a de facto and a de jure standard. FC-AL is the highest performance storage interconnect on the market today. Because of its superior performance and networking capabilities, and its broad industry support, Fibre Channel is the interconnect of choice for users that need high reliability, hot pluggability, improved connectivity, and the ability to send large volumes of data quickly over long distances. For users with less stringent performance and scalability requirements, Ultra SCSI is a viable, low-cost alternative. When the music stops, SSA is the technology that seems to be left with no place to sit down. Technologically inferior to FC-AL, the industry has been reluctant to support it, nearly guaranteeing that its adopters will be locked into a dead-end, single-source technology. Vendors have moved quickly to provide storage interconnect solutions that address the performance and reliability requirements of modern storage systems. Among them are both large Internet infrastructure equipment providers such as Cisco (CISCO), Lucent (LU), and Nortel (NT), as well as promising smaller companies that are attempting to solve this problem with innovative, scalable and effective solutions. Among these smaller companies is recently floated McDATA Corporation (MCDT). The company produces fibre channel switches and software for huge enterprise wide storage area networks (SANs), which let users anywhere on a network share storage devices. It also sells Fabric Ready preconfigured SAN systems built around its switch and director products. McDATA sells through other manufacturers, resellers, and systems integrators to large companies. Storage specialist EMC (EMC) and IBM (IBM) account for about 70% and 10% of sales, respectively. EMC, which acquired McDATA in 1995, owns 76% of the company through McDATA Holdings, but plans to distribute the stake to its shareholders by mid-2001. Another strong player in this field is industry leader Brocade Communications Systems (BRCD). The company makes fibre channel switches and related software for connecting corporate storage systems and servers, turning them into storage area networks (SANs). The company's SilkWorm switches automatically reroute data upon path failure and reconfigure the SAN when new devices are added. Brocade sells its products primarily in the US through systems integrator and equipment manufacturers. Customers include Compaq (CPQ), Data General, Dell (DELL), McDATA, and Sequent (acquired by IBM) account for about 70% of Brocade's sales. Other promising companies include Emulex Corporation (EMLX). Emulex designs three types of network connectivity products: network access servers, printer servers, and high-speed fibre channel products. Its LightPulse fibre channel adapters and hubs provide high-performance interfaces for computer networks. Emulex's network access servers enable remote access to WANs, and its printer servers connect directly to LANs (others usually connect to file servers), thus enhancing network performance. Emulex outsources manufacturing to K*TEC Electronics and sells its products mainly to equipment manufacturers (74% of sales) and distributors (24%). IBM and Compaq account for 19% and 14% of sales, respectively. Another company entering the fibre channel market place is Qlogic Corporation (QLGC). Although Qlogic's primary focus is on products using the small computer system interface (SCSI) standard, the company is expanding its product line to include the IDE and higher-performance fibre channel standards. It also makes management chips for the storage and server markets. The company sells its products to such server, workstation, and data peripheral makers as Compaq, Dell, Hitachi (HIT), IBM, and Quantum Corporation. Customers outside the United States account for more than half of QLogic's sales. The industry's smallest player, Vixel Corporation (VIXL), develops interconnect devices for storage area networks (SANs), which link networked computers and servers to data storage devices. Vixel's switches, hubs, and transceivers are based on fibre channel. The company also provides software for monitoring and managing SAN connections. Vixel sells its products directly and through resellers to such electronics manufacturers as Compaq (30%), Sun Microsystems SUNW) (25% of sales), Lucent Technologies, Hewlett-Packard (HWP), and IBM. For the past two years, INRANGE Technologies has been on somewhat of a fiscal fitness plan. Under the influence of its parent company, SPX Corp., INRANGE has been cutting the fat: Shedding slow-growth product lines in order to focus in the fastest growing segments of the data communications, data storage and data telephony markets. The result is a tightly focused, muscular company with a global penetration (international sales account for 45 per cent of company revenue). One key characteristic that separates INRANGE from its direct competitors is that the company has an operating history spanning almost 20 years. As a unit of General Signal Corp., INRANGE (or General Signal Networks as it was called) was a provider of equipment and services for the immense data centers of some of the world's largest companies. The company was acquired by SPX from General Signal in 1998, killing-off plans to spin-off INRANGE and opting instead to increase its profitability. Company revenue for the six months ended June 30, 2000, was $98.4 million, a decrease of $4.0 million, or 3.9%, from $102.4 million for the six months ended June 30, 1999. Foreign currency fluctuations accounted for $2.0 million of the revenue decline. Sales of the company's storage networking products increased by $5.7 million, primarily as a result of $3.7 million in revenue from its FC/9000 product, introduced in April 2000. The company currently sports a price to sales ratio (PSR) of x38.98, which is well below the industry average of x57.29, with Brocade being the highest at x126.4 and Vixel the lowest at x3.78. According to a report issued in April 2000, International Data Corporation estimated that the Fibre Channel market for storage area network hubs and switches will increase from $236 million in 1999 to $2.8 billion by 2003, a compound annual growth rate of 85%. International Data Corporation also projected that the market for director-class switches will be the fastest growing segment of the Fibre Channel market, increasing from $52 million in 1999 to $1.4 billion by 2003, representing a compound annual growth rate of 129%. Furthermore, information from an International Data Corporation report indicates that director-class switches will maintain a 300% to 500% price premium over the next lower segment of Fibre Channel switches for the foreseeable future. INRANGE is certainly in a good position to capture a good share of this market. The company's star product, the FC/9000 Fibre Channel Director, was recently voted "most innovative product of the year" at Forum STOCKAGE 2000, one of Europe's largest exhibitions for storage networking vendors held September 12-13 in Paris. The voting at Forum STOCKAGE 2000 was conducted by independent journalists, who evaluated four categories: hardware, software, fibre channel, and innovation. In winning the award for innovation, the FC/9000 was judged against products from 47 other vendors, including Brocade's Silk Worm 2800. INRANGE also announced recently that it has entered into a worldwide reseller agreement with Hewlett-Packard. HP's Complimentary Products Division (HPCP), an organization that partners with a large number of vendors to compliment HP's product, solutions and services portfolio with third-party solutions, will offer INRANGE's IN-VSN Storage Networking Systems and GigaMux Dense Wavelength Multiplexer products. The company's 64 port fiber switch is already twice the capacity of its nearest competitor and the company continues to invest heavily in research and development expecting to yield a 128 port switch this year and a 256 port switch sometime in 2001. In addition, a Merrill Lynch report has also tagged INRANGE's recently introduced "universal touchpoint architecture" as a high growth candidate, a product that enables an integrated package of high speed switching platforms and modular network software, which can help wide area networks link up without expensive equipment additions or reconfigurations. All said, INRANGE Technologies has all the ingredients for success. The company is fiscally fit, possesses a focused management team and continues to produce industry-leading products. With each of its switches priced in the $200,000 to $225,000 range, the company will not have to sell many to realize significant revenue growth considering the expected market appetite for fibre channel switches. The future certainly looks bright for INRANGE. CONTACT: For more information, contact 123Jump.com, Inc. 212-968-8700 Send email to: info@123jump.com Or, visit 123Jump at: 123jump.com All Rights Reserved. (c) Copyright: 2000 123jump.com, Inc.