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

To: Gary Korn who wrote (55169)	10/3/1998 8:25:00 PM
From: Pat Hughes	Respond to of 61433

Off Topic Hi Gary, What about FORE? Pat Hughes Still playing adpt?

To: Gary Korn who wrote (55169)	10/3/1998 9:24:00 PM
From: James A. Venooker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 61433

Dear Gary, I agree with your chart and analysis you have made, however, NN will not give LU the immediate presence, penetration, and forward looking potential that LU shareholders are outright demanding. Strictly by the numbers it is obvious that it would be cheaper to buy NN and several other small players (XLYN), however, the ultimate cost to integrate the company's, may be much higher than "just" the "cost to own" them, and once they have integrated the company's, LU is still not assured a market presence or penetration. As we all know, CSCO and ASND are leaps and bounds ahead of the competition, and the trend appears to have them pulling away from the pack. ASND fits LU like the cream that fills an Oreo cookie. ASND satisfies virtually every gap and weakness that LU has. LU fulfills the resources that ASND may need to continue to win out customers, advance technology, and ultimately give them the only legitimate chance to surpass CSCO in the Networking arena. Just my two cents. Jamie

To: Gary Korn who wrote (55169)	10/4/1998 11:06:00 AM
From: jach	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 61433

-OT- csco Message 5907763

To: Gary Korn who wrote (55169)	10/4/1998 11:10:00 AM
From: jach	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 61433

Networkers should rebound well, IMO look for asnd to 44-45, xyln to 14-15 (xyln should be around 20), FORE to be 16-17, and csco to be 59-62, NN to be around 20 (NN is a big bargain), cien to be 16-17 (should be at 30), near term

To: Gary Korn who wrote (55169)	10/4/1998 1:17:00 PM
From: bucky89	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 61433

Gary, You analysis makes sense if we are talking about a commodity business where switching suppliers is as easy as going to Safeway instead of Lucky for your groceries. But we are talking about the carrier networking market, and there are some very significant differences. For a service provider, switching equipment vendors is a very difficult undertaking. Your engineers have to be retrained, new processes defined and refined, not to mention new bugs to be found in the new vendor's equipment. You're throwing out the door many years of experience acquired from working with the old vendor's products. When AT&T dumped Stratacom ATM for Ascend, it was a very tumultuous decision for them. I can tell you that first hand. But they decided to do it because their ATM network was still in its infancy (only 8 ATM-equipped POP's), and they knew it would be impossible to switch once their ATM network grew bigger. Dissatisfied with Stratacom, it was now or never. So they bit the bullet and made the switch. The AT&T switch to Ascend is the only example I'm aware of where a carrier switched ATM equipment providers. In networking, these kinds of vendor switches will be very rare, if they ever happen again at all. So when Lucent makes a decision about which data switching vendor to buy, they are not only making a decision about technology--they're making a decision about which customers they want to have. For Ascend as we all know, the customer list is quite impressive and includes the most important carrier customers--AT&T, Williams, QWEST, NTT, UUNet(FR & RAS), GTE, etc.... For Newbridge, there are a much higher proportion of enterprise customers and much fewer carrier customers. Furthermore, Newbridge has not won a major new carrier contract for quite some time, I believe--most of their carrier customers were acquired years ago when the ATM market was in its infancy. The 90% of Newbridge's ATM revenues are from products that are more than three years old (i.e., the 36170). Their VIVID product is a disaster. Many attribute Newbridge's poor performance of late to bad marketing. But Ascend's marketing is not much better, and look at all the new contracts they are raking in. Once again, AT&T is the only example of a large service provider switching ATM equipment suppliers. Having seen how difficult it is to get a service providers to switch equipment, then how can Lucent expect to win new new contracts away from Ascend and Stratacom with an inferior Newbridge product? The same question can be applied to remote access switches, where Lucent's Livingston division has utterly failed to convince any carriers to switch to its product. Same for Frame Relay. IMO, Lucent will make a strong bid (at least one for one stock exchange) to buy Ascend before the end of the month. The question is, will Mory accept Lucent's offer? bucky89