re: Lucent Cools Heels on Price HikeLucent committed a lot of mistakes in buying Octel Communications, Ascend Communications, and Springtide Networks. It presented enormous difficulties as the products from these companies were no good.
What dream world are you living in? Each of these were well established companies with large customer base. I know that in Octel's case they were the market leaders in voice mail and basically began the decline when the OCTEL next generation product was shelved for the Lucent Anypath look at the world. Go to any and I mean any of the RBOCs and you'll find that Octel product and service started their downhill climb afte rthe aquisition and until that time they were the best.
ARE YOU KIDDING ME!!!...about all the startups that ruined Lucent?
I've give credit where credit is due for the stability of the 5ESS product line, but to say that the startups were the cause of ruining Lucent because they lacked expertise or education is so much on the BS side, it's a not even debatable.
I can't speak for all the start-ups Lucent bought, but can tell you, that the Cascade/Ascend division was contributing 1-Billion a qtr to the bottom line before the brilliant managment decided to cut most of the Core Switching product lines in favor of the other vaporware boxes they brought in the Westford facility. If the products are/were so inadequate, then why are there approx. 50,000 FR/ATM switches out there from Westford, MA?
I can attest that more than 95% of all Westford engineers had more than a undergrad degree and years of sucessful experience. Think about it, if Lucent had all the expertise, then why did they have to buy all these start-ups? Gee, couldn't the all mighty Lucent/Bell Labs come up with something for the market? I think we all know the answer here.
Lucent drove out tens of thousands just as talented than what they had coming out of the old school of AT&T University.
Other than that, where Lucent did go wrong? They should not have tried getting involved in a market segment such as Data, because they always and ever will be, just a phone company period! They've got great R&D in Bell Labs, but have no clue how to unlock the potential in it with there arrogant ways.
Sorry BobbyMax, you struck a cord in me. No hard feelings. I hope Lucent does recover, but Lucent managment has to concede where there faults are, and that's something they'll never do.
re: Lucent Cools Heels on Price HikeThey may not "die", but will certainly evolve and what we call a Class 5 switch 15 years from now won't be the same piece of equipment it is today.
Also, note the big push from the legacy voice switch vendors (except Lucent) putting dollars and marketing brawn behind packet telephony.
This is a marathon...but TDM voice equipment WILL be replaced.
What dream world are you living in? Each of these were well established companies with large customer base. I know that in Octel's case they were the market leaders in voice mail and basically began the decline when the OCTEL next generation product was shelved for the Lucent Anypath look at the world. Go to any and I mean any of the RBOCs and you'll find that Octel product and service started their downhill climb afte rthe aquisition and until that time they were the best.