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Technology Stocks : Lucent Technologies (LU) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mr.Fun who wrote (7666)	5/3/1999 7:09:00 AM
From: bill c.	Respond to of 21876

Mr. Fun and Gary, It's so easy to see where Gary is getting his view. I'm sure he understands the advantage Lucent, Nortel, etc will have with this migration strategy. Those 4 points are off the Cisco Marketing/Sales effort, "How to sell against LU, Nortel, etc". Customers are not buying the junk and spends billions theory... until later.

To: Mr.Fun who wrote (7666)	5/3/1999 10:23:00 AM
From: Techwatch	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 21876

Cisco pulls the plug on key WAN switch Data giant shifts wide-area switching strategy. By JIM DUFFY Network World, 05/03/99 SAN JOSE - Cisco has quietly killed its prime offering for the core of enterprise and service provider WANs and has delayed delivery of another WAN switch by about a year. The developments raise questions about Cisco's strategy for next-generation WAN switching and could cost the company business. Cisco users who were depending on these products will now have to put their plans on hold, opt for different Cisco gear, wait for the delayed products or choose another vendor's switch. Cisco has halted development of the TGX 8750, an IP and ATM switch for service provider and enterprise WAN backbones. The TGX 8750 was announced at the ATM Year 98 show last June (NW, May 25, 1998, page 70). The switch was supposed to go into field trials last year and ship this year. Cisco will now offer its MGX 8850, which is currently positioned as a service provider edge switch, for the WAN core, says Don Proctor, director of marketing for Cisco's Multiservice Switching business unit. Cisco has also delayed shipment of the IGX 8450, a WAN switch that also combines IP and ATM switching for enterprise data, voice and video integration. The IGX 8450 was supposed to ship in the fourth quarter of 1998 but won't be available until this fall, Proctor says (NW, Oct. 5, 1998, page 12). Analysts say Cisco could forfeit WAN business to rivals Ascend and Newbridge Networks, as well as to the high-speed router start-ups. "Wow," says Scott Heritage of investment firm Warburg Dillon Read in New York when told of the fate of the TGX 8750. "That's not a good sign. The product looked very promising on the drawing board, and I was quite optimistic about it. Obviously, they've been having problems." "Killing a product like that is significant because that whole announcement as I recall [positioned Cisco] far and away ahead of Ascend," says Rosemary Cochran of market researcher Vertical Systems Group in Dedham, Mass. "Very interesting," says Joe Skorupa of consultancy Ryan, Hankin, Kent in San Francisco. "I'm not surprised about the 8750. We never thought it was a serious player at the core." The TGX 8750 was a 20G bit/sec optical core switch intended to deliver broadband IP and ATM services using Cisco's Tag Switching and the Internet Engineering Task Force's Multiprotocol Label Switching technologies. Cisco designed the TGX 8750 to let users scale routing to terabit speeds and to bring OC-48c switching to the core "at a price that leads the industry," according to a Cisco press release - $60,000 per OC-48c switch and $45,000 for channelized OC-48. Proctor says Cisco killed the switch because the company couldn't build the product to come in at those promised prices. "It proved very difficult to produce one switch that would meet the enterprise customer's unique needs and the service provider's unique needs at the price they expect," Proctor says. He adds that Cisco's MGX 8850 has more than enough capacity, density and features to fulfill both the core and network edge roles in service provider and enterprise networks. Cisco delayed the IGX 8450 because it wants to add voice and virtual trunking capabilities to the switch. The IGX 8450 is a 3.2G bit/sec IP and ATM switch that connects LANs, legacy data, PBXs and video codecs across private WANs. The delay will not likely impact IGX user Fleet Technology Solutions of Albany, N.Y., the IT division of banking giant Fleet Financial Group in Boston. "We've gone through several reorganizations which have realigned certain resources as well," says Thomas Ryan, assistant vice president at Fleet Technology Solutions. "We've postponed the integration to a broadband core." Ryan says he expects to resume that integration and receive shipment of the IGX 8450 in six months.

To: Mr.Fun who wrote (7666)	5/3/1999 12:23:00 PM
From: The Phoenix	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 21876

Mr Fun I have responded and you have not addressed the issue. Fact: LU's telephony architecture, for better or worse, is indeed rooted in the definity product. I never said that this was a bad thing and in fact it is neccessary in the short term since customers are wed to this architecture. Indeed they will not move overnight and this is a huge advantage for LU. The question is how will LU transition when/if multipurpose single line packet based networks to the home become real. Front ending the 5E I don't believe is a long term answer. Maybe I'm wrong, but history has proven otherwise when we look at the data world and how it migrated. Fact: Going forward the network edge will be and is IP. You are communicating over IP to send your message to this forum as is every other person here. The network core certainly will be protocols other than IP but make no mistake - IP edges is what will rule. So in all due respect, on this point you are flat out wrong. Mr. Fun, you make the false assumption that the only benefit to IP telephony is to reduce time and cost for adds, moves, and changes. Although IP makes these efforts a snap, the cost benefits are huge - there is no reservation for bandwidth allowing a given trunk to support two to three times more users - that can easily translate into more than a 50% reduction in recurring costs. Add to this reduction in manpower and any enterprise - including those that are "fluid" can benefit significantly quickly paying off the initial outlay. And what a breath of fresh air for the IT department. They don't have to call in the LU technicians on an annual basis for their upgrades forking out $$$ per switch. Mr. Fun, you're in the business - well plugged in. Tell everyone here what an SP forks out for annual maintainance for each 5E. Fact: Voice on IP is new and not ready for prime time. So we all agree on this. The point of my question is what will occur to the existing paradigm if/when voice on IP is ready to carry mission critical life-line traffic. Voice will then migrate from traditional POT's networks onto IP based nets relagating existing infrastructure obsolete with the one exception being the transport core. Mr. Fun, you pointed out in your last post that carriers like QWST and Level3 have purchased 5E's....and that is true. These carriers did so to cultivate their telephony business - copper currently this the medium of choice for end points for consumers a market which these carriers recently targeted. As users - like you and me - move to intergrated solutions over DSL or Cable two things will happen. POT's growth will wane and with it 5E sales will fall off. Many industry luminaries predict this will occur. So, although you and Bill c have waived your arms a lot and danced around the issue you in fact have not answered my question nor did I expect you to. The fact is LU's current strategy is rooted in 5E's - it simply has to be. "New world" vendors like Cisco's strategies are not. Therefore these "new world" companies can afford to move faster and attack old world "5e" paradigms and any win is market growth and represents a beach-head for tomorrows networks. If Cisco succeeds in maintaining these beach-heads LU will be forced to move quicker to combat the attack on their traditional market....in doing so leaving their existing 5E based strategy behind and impacting that revenue stream. So, LU will need to backfill this revenue stream with next generation products and services or ? compete against new world multiservice networks with old world 5Es?? Of course there is the position one could take that says new world multiservice nets don't exist yet and that they are unproven and so LU has nothing to worry about. A valid position to take but I don't beleive it's healthy to bet that a competitor will fail on delivering. JMO. OG

To: Mr.Fun who wrote (7666)	5/3/1999 1:13:00 PM
From: bill c.	Respond to of 21876

Mr. Fun, Here is some additional information on the PathStar.... Lucent on Wednesday introduced two classes of products that will purportedly allow ISPs and other network operators to offer improved services over packet networks. R/Evolutionary Networking is a portfolio of products that promises to deliver, via packet networks, virtually every feature and service available on public networks, including three-way calling, caller ID, call waiting, and 911 access, according to Lucent. The PathStar Business Exchange (BSX), meanwhile, offers voice and data services over or ATM packet networks that, according to Lucent, can reduce capital and operations costs by as much as 70 percent. A representative from FirstWorld Communicatios, an ISP planning to use PathStar, said the system would enable replacement of the Class 5 switches commonly used for telephony, and allow delivery of voice and data services via IP. "What PathStar does is it brings [telephony] to an all-IP level," said Leslie Aun, spokeswoman for FirstWorld Communications, in Denver, which has a $70 million partnership with Lucent. "It means we can provide a whole lot better services for a whole lot less money." The R/Evolutionary Networking portfolio includes the 7R/E Call Feature Server, which is scheduled to ship this fall, as well as the 7R/E Packet Driver, which, together with Lucent's 5ESS Switch, has been designed by Lucent to play a key role in new packet-based networks. The 7R/E Call Feature Server processes calls in packets from one end of a network to another, encompassing local, long-distance, and international networks. Also part of the R/Evolutionary Networking portfolio are the 7R/E Programmable Feature Server, which allows service providers to create and deploy customized services; the 7R/E Multi-Media Resource Server, which offers interactive announcement and speech-recognition applications; the 7R/E One Link Manager, which allows service providers to handle network-wide operations, administration, management, and provisioning with one application; and the 7R/E Packet Gateways, which offer narrow-band and broadband packet access to subscribers over Digital Subscriber Line, cable, line, trunk, wireless, and direct IP, and ATM connections. The portfolio is targeted toward new or existing service providers with metropolitan-area networks, although Lucent's Frank D'Amelio, vice president of the company's switching business unit, said it should attract all types of service providers worldwide. "It allows customers to evolve their networks to provide voice and data services over packet networks, and it allows them to do it at their own pace," D'Amelio said. "In addition, for new emerging carriers, it allows them to put in place new packet networks -- with all the feature richness, reliability, and voice quality we have on our switches today." The PathStar BSX is a group of packet-based data and voice products for carriers entering new markets. A carrier can install a PathStar BSX in a multi-tenant building or midsize business and, once connected to the carrier's packet network, it can provide local voice and data switching and routing, integrated access, and other services including Internet telephony, Internet and IP-Virtual Private Network data access, remote access outsourcing, and basic telephone service. "It essentially allows carriers to come in at fairly low entry and operation costs to provide network elements they ordinarily would have to obtain separately," said Harry Carr, vice president of Lucent's data networking systems unit. "And, most importantly, it will work with whatever the backbone structure is. Is it predominantly router-based? It'll work. ATM? It'll work." The IP telephony services offered include call waiting, conference calling, call hold, caller ID, call forwarding, business group dialing, automatic callback, speed dialing, and multi-line hunt service. "[The PathStar BSX] gives new carriers additional opportunities to generate service revenue, and puts PathStar products on the customer's premises," Carr said. "And we developed it so it will work in today's networks with other people's equipment as well as our own." The PathStar Business Service Exchange is scheduled for July availability, at a starter-configuration list price of less than $100,000. infoworld.com