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Technology Stocks : Nortel Networks (NT) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lino... who wrote (9476)	1/29/2001 11:34:33 AM
From: Kenneth E. Phillipps	Respond to of 14638

Nortel backing away from Open IP? JANUARY 29, 2001 PREVIOUS NEWS ANALYSIS NetPlane Opens up IP Routing WASHINGTON, DC-- NetPlane Systems, a supplier of portable networking protocol software and systems, announced today that it's shipping the first release of OPTIRoute, a software suite that included the building blocks for IP routing code. The company has yet to reveal who these customers actually are, but the announcement comes at an intersting time. Nortel Networks Corp. appears to be scaling back its Open IP business, at a time when the number of hardware startups in search of open IP code is exploding. If past experience is any indication of how trustworthy NetPlane is and how well its software sells, then it should be in good shape. NetPlane, which used to be called Harris & Jeffries, has gained an excellent reputation selling its multiprotocol label switch (MPLS) source code, according to David Newman, president of Network Test. Now the company is taking the next logical step and moving up the protocol stack to provide layer 3 IP routing source code. In the first release it’s offering the suite includes Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) and will release Border Gateway Protocol (BGP4), Intermediate System to Intermediate System (IS-IS) protocol and RIPv2 later in 2001. NetPlane’s timing couldn’t be better. Why? First, any routing company will confess that software is the hardest part of the product development cycle. For example, it took Juniper Networks Inc. (Nasdaq: JNPR - message board), which built its code from scratch, two years to construct software stable enough to be deployed in commercial networks. And Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO - message board) , the granddaddy of routing, is still refining and releasing new versions of its IOS routing software. At the same time, Netplane's number one competitor looks like it might be bowing out of the game. Nortel, which has been licensing a source code called Open IP to other vendors, recently dissolved the engineering group working on the software. Some of the engineers working on Open IP were part of the 4,000 employees that Nortel laid-off last week, but the company would not specify how many from the group lost their jobs and how many were shifted to other groups within the company (see Nortel to Cut 4,000 Jobs ). The plan going forward is to use the technology in 3G wireless products, says a spokesperson. Many startups such as Avici Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: AVCI - message board; Frankfurt: BVC7), Pluris Inc., and Hyperchip Inc. as well as established vendors like Alcatel SA (NYSE: ALA: Paris: CGEP:PA) and Lucent Technologies Inc. (NYSE: LU - message board) have looked toward third parties to provide them with the essential building blocks (see Hyperchip Hypes Its Hardware ). With IP routing systems proliferating, the demand for reliable source code is high. --Marguerite Reardon, senior editor, Light Reading, lightreading.com lightreading.com

To: Lino... who wrote (9476)	1/29/2001 1:09:07 PM
From: Paul Lee	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 14638

Nortel expected to announce Web switch plans By Susan Taylor OTTAWA (Reuters) - Nortel Networks Corp. is expected to announce Tuesday its product plans and strategy to sell the Web switching technology it purchased from Alteon WebSystems Inc. last July for about $7.3 billion, analysts said Monday. Nortel, the world's No. 1 supplier of fiber-optic network equipment, said in a statement that it would announce a "new technology to help ignite the Internet commerce boom." "I think it's going to be basically the re-branding, launching and emphasizing of the Alteon product portfolio: how it fits into Nortel solutions and how they plan to compete in the content switching market," said Christin Armacost, an analyst at SG Cowen. "I expect the announcement to be an interesting strategy and product focus, not necessarily anything that would change the (financial) estimates." Alteon -- which became part of a new Nortel content network business unit following the purchase -- develops Web switches that use traffic control techniques to speed up the servers that feed data into networks and Web sites. San Jose, California-based Alteon's switches direct traffic from the Internet to Web servers used by phone companies and other service providers, which operate data centers running Web sites for customers. "As the Web continues to mature, the ability to better manage data across servers and relieve congestion and also be able to share data across servers...(is) very important, especially for things like e-commerce," said Dave Powers, an analyst at Edward Jones & Co. "A lot of the telephone carriers are moving more and more into the Web hosting business and handling data center functions for their customers. It gets Nortel well positioned." Nortel sold Alteon's gigabit ethernet network interface card business to 3Com Corp. in November for $110 million in cash, saying it wanted to focus on Alteon's core Web switch business. "I'm assuming that it's going to be somewhat similar to Cisco's content switching announcement," added Armacost of the Nortel announcement. Cisco Systems Inc. purchased ArrowPoint Communications Inc., which makes switches that direct Web traffic, last May for about $6 billion in stock.