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Technology Stocks : CGRM Centigram -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Red Dragon who wrote (227)	11/24/1997 2:27:00 PM
From: David R	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 333

Octel's SP product is Sierra. Sierra is 1990 technology. It is 386-based, and uses a proprietary O/S and HW. It is not extendable except via "servers" which connect via OctelLink Analog networking. Octel actually uses an analog network link to demo VPIM on Sierra. Sierra is not fully redundant (i.e. multiple single points of failure). I would guess that this is why Lucent Wireless is still using CGRM. Sierra never lived up to its capacity hype, and until recently, could only support 60,000 users. Octel sells Sierra by low-balling the bare system, and then over-pricing the add-ons and expanded capacity. Octel was supposed to have a new product (IMA) in 1995. It is 2 years late, and I doubt that we will ever see it. It is fortunate that Lucent bought them, they would have faced some serious revenue problems otherwise (SP represented 50% of revenues). Octel's best product is the Overture CPE line. I believe that Lucent bought Octel to get the referrals to about $10B in switch upgrades ala the Octel enterprise accounts (most of the fortune 500).