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Technology Stocks : Cabletron Systems (CS: NYSE) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Doug who wrote (5612)	2/3/1999 8:05:00 AM
From: BMcV	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 8358

I think both price and quality have helped them hold their place in the market. Their strategy at the time they announced the price cuts on their SSRs was to be aggressive on pricing so they wouldn't become a prize-winning wallflower, ie, win awards on technical merit but sell no product. And they have won their share of awards with the SSR. But they knew they no longer commanded the market presence of a Cisco, or even a 3COM, so they had to get in customers' doors. What better entry than being able to say, here's the fastest product at the cheapest price? Unfortunately for CS, VARs and other integrators may not be playing along. One SI contributor, I believe Jack Colton, said customers come to him, waving the PR from CS, citing the award wins, but that he tries to talk them out of using them. The reason, I suppose, is that they may be weak in other areas, in the much-touted end-to-end solutions game. Overcoming perceptions that CS is a dinosaur is proving harder than coming up with great products and devising clever marketing schemes. The company that CS is coming so much to resemble (as a stock market play), namely UIS, dragged on for years with no revenue growth despite repeated restructurings, new initiatives, takeover rumors etc. It was only when the CEO changed, that the stock took off.