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Technology Stocks : Ascend Communications-News Only!!! (ASND) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hope who wrote (1271)	3/9/1998 11:20:00 PM
From: Jon Cave	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1629

Not sure if this has been posted. But here it is anyway. 3Com looks to carriers, Ascend ratchets up Max line By Scott Berinato, PC Week Online 03.09.98 4:48 pm ET Access hardware continues to scale past the enterprise into carrier-class. Focused on that market segment, 3Com Corp. today rolled out a voice-data hardware road map with partner Siemens AG that will lead to multi-service central office switches. Meanwhile, Ascend Communications Inc. plans to update its lagging Max access concentrators later this month with the Max 6000 series. Carrier-class access has been the theme this year for network administrators, as enterprise customers look to outsource remote access and at the same time add services that dramatically reduce costs. Such services include virtual private networks, voice over IP and electronic commerce. To make these services viable, vendors need to offer QOS (quality of service) guarantees, which in turn have spurred the demand for higher-quality, telephony-like hardware. 3Com and Siemens will start by bringing voice-data convergence to the central office, where phone companies could implement voice over IP and other multi-service network technologies. 3Com will combine its Total Control access platform with Siemens' EWSD telephony switching hardware to create the new multi-service switching system. EWSD is used by 300 carriers, serving more than 150 million telephone users, according to Siemens officials in Munich. The product, called IP Telephony Gateway, is due in the second half of the year. 3Com will also address the enterprise with stickball communications products. These will include a telephony gateway, a Siemens-developed telephony server that will integrate with data networks, and SuperStack II switches with QOS hooks to enable data and voice running on the same network, said 3Com officials in Santa Clara, Calif. In addition, Siemens will license 3Com's SuperStack II and CoreBuilder switches and sell them under its own brand name starting next quarter. Conversely, the telephony server based on Siemens technology will be sold by 3Com as a SuperStack II switch beginning in the fourth quarter. The telephony gateway is due in the third quarter. The products will be demonstrated at CeBIT in Germany next week, officials said. 3Com's Total Control platform is based on digital signal processors, which enable users to add services to equipment as firmware upgrades instead of forcing carriers and enterprises to constantly buy new hardware. For its part, Ascend will update its Max platform in the 6000 series to address that issue along with scalability issues. The Alameda, Calif., company will add processors on the cards to offload the CPU, thus improving performance, according to sources familiar with the new product. While still a leader in the access hardware market, Ascend has been feeling the heat from 3Com with its Total Control platform, Cisco Systems Inc. with its quick rollout of the carrier-class AS5300 and AS5800 concentrators, and startups like Aptis Communications Inc. 3Com can be reached at www.3Com.com. Siemens is at www.siemens.com. Ascend is at www.ascend.com.