re: Foundry Unwraps 'Mucho Grande'Uh, let's see: why is the new 6K not a product?First, because it has not shipped yet. This was classic Cisco to pre-announce that product and delay a market they're very, very late to. It's just too embarrassing to admit that Constellation two has been scrapped because that's fodder for angry shareholders gunning for John's job.
Classic Cisco delay the market tactics. Man they're good. Actually, not that good because their customers aren't as stupid as Cisco thinks they are, and they are going elsewhere. That is a fact. Force10 is having a field day right now in the high end, and the Cisco announcement actually accelerated the momentum for them because now the customers have seen the stripes and it's the same old leper (d).
And look at Foundry turning in solid numbers every quarter. They are taking share from Cisco: FACT.
This "new" Cat is not going to be in the market until Q4 at the earliest and by then, they'll be pulling their customary "one more quarter" nonsense. Then they'll fire someone or reassign him, and get one of the mafioso "untouchables" on the project. They'll get something out but by then the major customers will be so pissed off and look like such suckers because these are old tricks and old dogs, that they'll go with someone else just to tell Cisco once and for all "f_ck off" for screwing your customers.
Big opportunity for Foundry to replace Cat 2k thru 6k in large enterprises, and with a partner or with MG, take out the 65k. Man it is so doable. Go Foundry!
Please write in English - I don't like to work so hard to read a post!
It's good to see .18 micron products in the 10Gb. space. Smaller traces means better density and less cost (eventually). The 10 Gb. market is still small - Force 10 promised the board $10 million in Q1 but only delivered $5 million. I can't see them being a $100 Million compay by the time that Cisco/Foundry/Riverstone/Extreme ship products. To see the future, look at the past. Force 10 will be acqired by a big telco that wants to play in this new market. Their valuation will depend on their execution over the next 2-3 quarters, and if they can land customers outside the lunatic fringe (National Labs, University cluster computers, etc.).
Foundry will be the most formidable competitor for Force 10 for customers that buy on technology, and of course cisco will gain market share when they finally ship, even though the product will be expensive and offer mediocre performance when compared to the alternatives. But cisco is cisco, right?!
Extreme puzzles me. Anyone else remember their big 10Gb. marketing splash last year at Interop? Where are the products? They are donating lots of equipment again to InteropNet, and they have provided the badge holders this year. The way these spend marketing $, you would think they were profitable!
re: Foundry Unwraps 'Mucho Grande'Wiles, is this just about 10G to the wiring closet, or is there a bigger trend afoot: VoIP, Wireless, etc (your last paragraph).
Real isssue is that much of this market is commoditizing -- which actually plays better for us then the apsirants.
Density or denseness. Never doubt the supervisoir engines at work
re: Foundry Unwraps 'Mucho Grande'Not sure where you got your numbers for Force10 board meeting but you are wrong. Like Foundry, Force10 is beating expectations!
re: Foundry Unwraps 'Mucho Grande'Not only is Pacman off base on the revenues, what's this telco buyout nonsense? Why would a telco buy an equipment company?
I think they will be acquired by Juniper (cause they need an enterprise play or they'd dead), Cisco (cause they ain't got and they know it), or Nortel (can you say, revival of Bay Networks?), or go public by Q1 of 04.
And they will be a $100m company fairly soon. This quarter's a blowout and it's only four weeks old.
re: Foundry Unwraps 'Mucho Grande'Switch Fabric capacity has become something like the PMPO of audio amplifiers. A 180W PMPO amp probably has a 2W amplifier inside!
re: Foundry Unwraps 'Mucho Grande'For all the chatter going on here about the prospects of Force10, Extreme and Foundry in eating Crisco switch sales, the real dark horse is going to be Dell.
Dell recently announced a set of layer 2 switches that beats the pants off the pricing of all the big majors by two thirds. They also seem to have layer 3 switches in the works that should be out by Q4'03.
"The Dell PowerConnectTM 6000 Series Layer 3 routing Ethernet switches will feature VCT technology developed and implemented by Marvell Semiconductor, the silicon supplier to PowerConnect Ethernet switches." http://www.dell.com/us/en/esg/...
At $100/GigE port this will cut the margins of the itty bitty upstarts to nothing. Crisco probably will resist for a year before being forced to respond to Dell's pricing. After that it is going to be one deflationary downward spiral in which the others will be forced to respond to Dell's moves.
Ofcourse, Dell won't have all the geewhiz bang on day one. They will start out invading the SMB market and slowly but surely make inroads into the Fortune 500 over a span of two years while beefing up their features while playing the price game to their advantage. Even mighty Crisco will end up having to eat crow. For those folks who don't remember the Wintel server wars of the mid to late 90's IBM and Compaq lost their hold over the Fortune 500 the same way to Dell.
You can scream all you want about in technology this and technology that. But when push comes to shove, the bean counters will shove us engineers aside. Either way, the future of swithcing looks like a dog eat dog low margin business. Crisco not withstanding.
re: Foundry Unwraps 'Mucho Grande'It was not a good business strategy for Force 10 to reduce the prices of its switches by 60% or so. Anyway it was a very bad way to undercut the competition. Because of this Force 10 has lost utsa credibility in the market place. It will be too hard for Force 10 to bring any credibility.
Force 10 has not published any details as to what OAM&P functions it has implemented. There are no details on its switching fabric either.
Classic Cisco delay the market tactics. Man they're good. Actually, not that good because their customers aren't as stupid as Cisco thinks they are, and they are going elsewhere. That is a fact. Force10 is having a field day right now in the high end, and the Cisco announcement actually accelerated the momentum for them because now the customers have seen the stripes and it's the same old leper (d).
And look at Foundry turning in solid numbers every quarter. They are taking share from Cisco: FACT.
This "new" Cat is not going to be in the market until Q4 at the earliest and by then, they'll be pulling their customary "one more quarter" nonsense. Then they'll fire someone or reassign him, and get one of the mafioso "untouchables" on the project. They'll get something out but by then the major customers will be so pissed off and look like such suckers because these are old tricks and old dogs, that they'll go with someone else just to tell Cisco once and for all "f_ck off" for screwing your customers.
Big opportunity for Foundry to replace Cat 2k thru 6k in large enterprises, and with a partner or with MG, take out the 65k. Man it is so doable. Go Foundry!