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Technology Stocks : 3Com Corporation (COMS) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mang Cheng who wrote (15473)	5/7/1998 2:22:00 AM
From: joe	Respond to of 45548

Mang, Sorry my posts are long... Sometimes I'm just organizing my thoughts... I guess someone might say, they're not too organized <gg>. I was just about to pack it up, but I couldn't resist commenting on some of your stuff. Here goes... another long post<g> Yes, true, >>Lots of education is required <<. That's why the relationship with VAR's and distributers is very important. That's their job. Plus, I notice Eric B. is doing a lot more publicity work last few months. He'll probably make that his major job all year long. >>....slow but relatively easy job for coms to break into the big-enterprise market. << why easy? >>these companies all have tons of cisco products<< yes!! That's why they're so good - but some of it's legacy stuff. Still, old customers's like to rely on familiar faces. >>Also, I have talked to a couple of network guys in our company, their knowledge of Gigabit-ethernet and layer-3 switches are close to zero.<< Same here. Following your arguement, and comments above, COMS would be directly competing with CISCO - just following in their footsteps. If they focus on the F-500s, they'll get beat by CISCO (at the moment) for all the reasons you mentioned. Their focus has to be on SME. Let the VAR's and others slowly educate/market and things will fall into place - perhaps slowly, but that's why the high end stuff should not be their main focus at the moment. If the products have quality and are priced well, the word will eventually filter out. I think, the $$ will first come in mainly from modems and RAS products (is this correct - anybody?). Even though COMS just had the cable modem deal, I don't think we know the specifics - like how much $$ is the contract worth. Same story for DSL. >>they don't handle all kinds of traffics and protocols like cisco routers and the new router switches<< I don't think this is true. CISCO hype. COMS is steadily making all these products able to handle all protocols. Heck, I think everybody is doing that.... >>If this myth is dispelled, than I think coms will get much more contracts.<< Yep. Back to the VAR's and salespeople. It'll take time for the high end stuff to break in, but they'll do it. But, while the VAR's, etc. are doing their thing, it'll be the small & medium size businesses that will be working up COMS earnings. Some people say CISCO is getting into the SME space and will eat COMS's lunch. That I want to see to believe!! In the same way, if COMS expects to seriously crack into CISCO's turf anytime soon, forget it. That's talk for 1999-2001. COMS will have to climb up the ladder in it's own product spaces first. Joe