re: BrightLink, White Rock Cut JobsCruiser- sorry to upset you. I was commenting on the industry trend of dumping top management and putting conflicted, interim CEOs in place. The Force10 issue was previously mentioned (I didn't mean to add to that specific company discussion). As a general discussion, I think it stinks when any company is exposed to a conflicted CEO/VC - especially in a down market where the investors start getting worried and want to cut off all downside exposure at everyone else's expense.
I hope Force10 goes IPO with their current CEO! (The more telecom equipment IPOs the better). At various times I've heard some good things about the company. BUT- if they actually dump the CEO and put a VC in place (as posted by someone else), employees should be very concerned.
re: BrightLink, White Rock Cut Jobssorry bluewater. it's that time of the month i guess. reading your point again i'm in agreement with you. the vc's are going nuts right now. they are very unpredictable in this market. ceos and management teams should keep them at arm's length until the market starts picking up again, if possible. unfortunately too many companies need money right now to do that.
re: BrightLink, White Rock Cut Jobs From what I know of White Rock (I have seen their presentation and no, I don't work for them and i'm not even related to any of the founders) ... they are promoting a simpler, smaller, faster cheaper way of doing plain old SONET to the big telco's. No god boxes or MSPP's ... no metro-optical Ethernet play sometime in the future ... no big MPLS vs ATM debate, no MEMS vs the next newest optical switching technology ... just standards-based products that should work at a price point that is compelling and for which there is a recognized market demand. The people involved know the business and understand the metrics of their customer base well. They have even convinced Tellabs of the merits of their product (not a mean feat).
In my estimation they could do for their market space what Carrier Access did for the M13 multiplexing market - i.e. suddenly make it cost effective (from both a CAPEX and OPEX perspective) to deploy higher capacity bandwidth in cases where previously the business case didn't support it.
I hope they make it .... if they fail it doesn't bode well for many other companies whose grip on their customers needs is somewhat more tenuous.
Is this Cruiser guy PK Dubai himself ? His friend the CTO got fired. He must be refering to him.
Trying to guess who the person who wants to sacrifice his arm for Force10 stocks. Maybe the Taliban will be happy to do that for you in the Kabul stadium.
re: BrightLink, White Rock Cut Jobs-í-¦It stinks when any company is exposed to a conflicted CEO/VC -í-¦ -Bluewater
These words would be one of the 2002 Top Ten: Words of Wisdom. And Brightlink history would be the story.
A year ago, the new VC assigned interim CEO showed up frequently in the Brightlink, and a couple of months later, officially, he took Harry-í-»s office, and together with the first major layoff, the team-í-»s moral damaged badly, that was Spring, 2001. A few months later, the idiot failed to close the new funding from any external VCs - that put Brightlink in the big financial risk, but it gave excuses for the second major layoff at the end of the last Summer. In that layoff, two kinds of people were affected -¿C enemies and capable people who know how to run Brightlink -¿C including four key VPs who built Brightlink a few years ago. Shortly after layoff, that knave was awarded as the CEO for his significant achievement in the company. Unfortunately, this victory doesn-í-»t help to sell the Brighlink even after putting heavy mirrors and smokes on the street. On the engineering/technology side, the entire team was exhausted when they were pushed on the wrong track to build the expansive huge monster, which nobody could ever afford it. At the end, everyone was awarded with a big salary cut for their hard work in the long long Winter .
Now, it-í-»s the Spring, again. History simply repeats itself.
What will be the Brightlink-í-»s new story this summer? (Is this a few million bucks question or just nonsense -¿C one wonders-í-¡)
re: BrightLink, White Rock Cut JobsIf you do say what you say about BrightLink Switch then probably you did work at BrightLink. If so it didn't occur to you while you were working there that you are working to a build monster? Be fair to their concept and if you don't understand you better not comment.
The new CEO is as clueless as the old one and so are investors who were equally cluless and lost billions of $ in telecom. Who is responsible? What is the yardstick we can use to measure success or failure in an environment like this?
Probably not having strategic investors and carrier connections could be one reason.Another reason a missing window of opportuniy immediately after 3rd (is it 2nd?) round to raise some more money using deb financing. But if they did get money then execution might have been a problem.
I don't think Brightlink system is monster. It is supposed to be suitable for small/medium/large switch application with the same hardware and software.
Sure with any first design there will be always points and things that one can improvize. Switches which were built 5 years ago will be definitely ugly compared with what what you can build today. But BrightLink switching concept(seperate from System Design) is unique and I don't think anybody else will be able to do what BrightLink accomplished. Ofcourse lead time is only 18-24 months and another company could possibly do if indeed there is need for such solution and do that without violating the patent.
re: BrightLink, White Rock Cut Jobssntwk, The yard stick is Sales and Marketing(including former and current CEO) messed up big time.....don't know if you are/were part of the team...its the market like this which test marketing/Sales/CEO.... not unlike back in 1999..when even a Slid show would sell for bn$$$
PS:another yard stick..may be a interview question..."how many boxes did u you sell.."
re: BrightLink, White Rock Cut JobsFinally.......White Rock, Brightlink and a few others should read Millerlite's message and take it to heart! POs from no-name carriers won't sell the company.
In defense of WhiteRock and Brightlink, both whom have real products , real companies, etc. $150 billion $$$ invested by the most educated people in the world supports the fact the NOBODY saw what was coming and when they sensed it, there was nowhere to run.
And sadly, more pathetically, Fujitsu led the market in shipments......another round of dereg anyone?
I hope Force10 goes IPO with their current CEO! (The more telecom equipment IPOs the better). At various times I've heard some good things about the company. BUT- if they actually dump the CEO and put a VC in place (as posted by someone else), employees should be very concerned.