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To: djane who wrote (53760)	9/5/1998 11:32:00 PM
From: djane	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 61433

IBD. Start-Up Guru [Estrin] Sets Up Shop At Giant Cisco Date: 9/8/98 Author: Michele Hostetler Silicon Valley entrepreneur Judy Estrin brings insight to her job as Cisco Systems Inc.'s chief technology officer. The biggest seller of networking gear in April named Estrin its top technologist. Estrin has guided nascent technology to maturation. At Stanford University, she worked with Internet pioneer Vint Cerf on the TCP/IP protocols that laid the groundwork for the Internet. She co-founded one of the first networking companies, Bridge Communications, and sold it to 3Com Corp. in '87. She also co-founded Network Computing Devices Inc., which makes X terminals. That product helped lead to today's thin clients. These low-cost, limited-feature machines are aimed at networks that use servers to store most programs and data. More recently, she co-founded multimedia software company Precept Software, which brings video to networks. Cisco bought Precept in April. With annual revenue topping $8 billion, Cisco is no start-up. But it's heading into turbulent waters as a maker of products for ''converged networks.'' Such systems will put phone calls, Internet access and all data-voice-video communications on the same networks. Estrin recently spoke with IBD about her job at Cisco. IBD: How does your vision of multimedia software complement Cisco's networking strategy? Estrin: Clearly, Cisco has been very focused on the aspects of convergence - data, voice and video. But I like to think of it in two phases. The first phase is really an infrastructure issue, where you are merging the networks but many of the applications are separate. So you still are interconnecting (phones) on one hand and computer systems on the other. The second phase of that becomes more of a software play, where you are integrating applications. You're looking at how to do on-the-job training with video. How do you build the next generation of call centers? How do you really integrate messaging systems so you have universal messaging? IBD: At what stage are converged networks? Estrin: On a scale of one to 10, we're at three and picking up momentum. We're past the talking stage. We're into the doing stage. IBD: What needs to happen before converged networks become commonplace? Estrin: Some of that has to do with just the maturation of the voice- over-IP (Internet protocol) world. We have all the architectures and some of the products. You'll see more products coming in the next year or two. There is a big area in manageability. To be able to tell someone to move from the old world - which is circuit based and centralized - to this new world - which is very distributed and packet based - you have to make sure you give them the tools to provide service in the same way they did in the past. It's one thing to move the information around a network. It's another thing to have all the tools to provide all these services on top of (the network). Continued on next page LN DEP DEF LINES:00045 INCHES:00006.2 PICAS:00037.06 ERRORS:00002 IBD: Are companies nervous about handing over voice networks to a data company, since voice has always been more reliable? Estrin: It's more of a marketing illusion than a reality. If you look at our customers today, many are running their business on our products because data has become much more strategic (than voice). It's not the case of: We just woke up one morning and said, ''Hey, we've done data. Let's move into the voice business.'' There's a new market out there, which is this new world of converged data, voice and video together. We are certainly as well prepared or better prepared to serve that market as our competitors are. Here's this new paradigm: Who do I feel more comfortable with taking me into that new world? We're not going to customers and saying, ''Turn off your telephones; this is what you put in there instead.'' We are leading our customers to this new infrastructure, which looks more like a data infrastructure today than it does a telephony infrastructure. IBD: How could the merger between Northern Telecom Ltd. and Bay Networks Inc. affect Cisco? Estrin: I think that merger is a clear sign that Nortel is recognizing that this new world is about data. It is going to be challenging for them to really integrate their solutions into a vision of what this new world is. We at Cisco have to assume it will work, even though we don't think it will. We view them as a formidable competitor for this new world. We just plan to get there first and be better. (C) Copyright 1998 Investors Business Daily, Inc. Metadata: CSCO COMS NCDI NT BAY E/IBD E/SN1 E/FRT E/TECH

To: djane who wrote (53760)	9/6/1998 4:59:00 PM
From: djane	Respond to of 61433

Frame Relay Gets The Time Of Day [WMB info] techweb.com (09/06/98; 11:04 a.m. ET) By Kate Gerwig, InternetWeek Most businesses knock off for the weekend, so why shouldn't their networks? Even Monday through Friday, the demands on enterprise network bandwidth often plummet after normal businesses hours. But most enterprises pay for a steady level of bandwidth 24 hours a day. Williams Communications is offering one of the first major enhancements to plain-vanilla frame relay service with its Flex-CIR service, which lets IT managers change the amount of bandwidth they pay for by the hour and by the day. In some cases, enterprises will be able to save up to 50 percent on permanent virtual circuit (PVC) charges, though charges for individual ports on Williams' network remain the same. On the competitive landscape, Washington, D.C.-based MCI began offering customers a way to prioritize their own frame traffic earlier this year, and Qwest LCI (formerly LCI International) lets IT managers change the committed information rates (CIRs) of their PVCs dynamically with its Authority Network Management System. But Williams' Flex service offers a set pricing model for predictable budgeting. "Frame has been static for a while. It's a killer technology, but it's just kind of out there," said TeleChoice analyst Tom Jenkins. "I haven't heard of any other provider scheduling bandwidth in this way as well as providing fixed prices." Frame relay services traditionally have let users choose a fixed CIR for each circuit, with price depending on the chosen fixed speed. Flex-CIR offers users the ability to assign one CIR to a circuit during the busiest hours of the business day -- for example, drop it lower for early evening use and still lower for overnight and weekend hours. Williams still offers fixed monthly pricing, however, by prorating the average price of the CIRs. Flex-CIR is designed for carriers, including ISPs, competitive local exchange carriers (CLECs), long distance providers, and resellers, to extend to their customers, which will let most of them compete with the biggest national carriers on something other than price, said Mark Heaton, Williams' frame relay product manager. "The only way end users will get this service is through one of our wholesale partners," Heaton said. "They can sit down together to figure out how the customer's traffic patterns vary over a typical workday." The service was developed for fairly sophisticated frame customers who have historical traffic data that lets them know how their traffic varies over the course of the day, Heaton said. Williams' wholesale partners include ISPs Savvis Communications and Concentric Network. "Providers need to be flexible so they can meet the different business needs of a diverse customer base," said Mike Gaddis, chief technology officer at St. Louis-based Savvis Communications. For now, a customer's change order would take two to three days to implement. But in the next year, Williams will roll out an Internet-based Web interface so a customer's carrier could execute change orders immediately. That ability will be extended to customers in the future, Heaton said.