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To: Jack Colton who wrote (41776)	4/1/1998 2:14:00 AM
From: pat mudge	Respond to of 61433

Jack -- Thanks for that fantastic response. Talk about feeling as though you were in grad school. I learn more here on SI than I ever would studying for a doctorate. I appreciate the fact you took the time to explain about the personnel and engineering and training required to set up and maintain the networks. It explains why mergers are necessary as data and voice converge. Later -- Pat

To: Jack Colton who wrote (41776)	4/1/1998 6:42:00 AM
From: gbh	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 61433

WIN98 has an ATM stack native to the operating system. So, we will definitely see an explosion in ATM growth,... Jack, agreed with much or your post, except it wasn't clear to me where the above statement fits. Are you implying that ATM to the desktop will be a driver of explosive growth? I think traditional ATM to the desktop via ATM LANs is already dead, having been supplanted by 100Mb/s E'net now, and in the future by 1Gb/s E'net (once the physical transport issues are resolved). The only other area where ATM to the desktop might apply that I've heard of is ATM over DSL. On this, 1) its not clear ATM will be the dominant transport for this new market, 2) DSL even appearing on the desktop in volume is years away, at best.

To: Jack Colton who wrote (41776)	4/1/1998 11:23:00 AM
From: The Phoenix	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 61433

Jack, Interesting response. Here's a different view. First your statement: Orginal Comment Carriers will become the preferred sales channels, and the influence of today's one-stop shopping mergers and acquisitions will wane. Your response: I am not sure what he considers a carriers. I do not think he means the RBOCs, or AT&T. If anything, my observation is that the performance level of personnel (from those companies) related to "advanced network services" is exactly why many private companies invest in their own Network Administrative staffs. As we put into place more and more private ATM networks, we (my company and other Network Integrators) establish a reputation, in a lot of our accounts, of technical expertise that can not be found in the carriers or other "systems integrators." The downside, for me and other Network Integrators, is that it takes an incredible amount of training to keep up with the different manufacturers - and proper configuration of their equipment. It is very much like attending graduate school in electrical engineering, and never getting to graduate. Because of this high level of expertise and continuous training, I do not see the carriers of being able to provide enough network engineers to engineer all of the corporate and government networks that are out there. Highly trained personnel don't grow on trees, unfortunately. You're right, great people don't grow on tree's, but carriers need to change their business model to succeed. With deregulation delivering bandwidth is quickly becoming a commodity business. Therefore carriers will seek new ways to improve margins and one of the areas being targeted is value added services. TO what extent this reality will encroach on traditional Network Integrators business remains to be seen, however this event will (and is) occurring. Win98 has an ATM stack Really? In what capacity and for what purpose? ATM LAN's are dead, so how would this addition help ATM buildout. ATM to the home over Cable or DSL could happen however the IP folks are in the lead and are a stronger force in this space...so chance ATM (via high bandwidth technology) makes it to the home is slim. So, an ATM stack in WIN98 I don't think will help the ATM battle much. I suspect MSFT is doing this as a hedge and it's probably a fall out of work being done on NT. JMO Gary (not Korn)