Ascend Archive
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Re: (ASCEND) Ascend stock (fwd)

This is just MZ talking, not a Livingston rep at the moment...

Once upon a time Matt Holdrege shaped the electrons to say...
>Sounds reasonable, but it just isn't true. Ascend acquired the GRF team and
>the switching team and others. These units were doing fine on their own and

But could you have acquired the same number of bodies and focused them on
other needs?  I don't know, like I said, this is me talking with that it
looks like to me.  Product announcements come fast an furious, but then
on this list months later people are still asking for a feature that
was press released.

>I suppose it's typical to find the one feature that you do well and we
>don't do so well and trumpet that. You'll notice that we don't try that
>with the numerous features that don't work well on the Portmasters or don't
>exist. Let's let the customers tell us what works and what doesn't.

I picked that because it has been a major sales point.  3Com/USR has lost
out because of no OSPF.  The larger the customer, the more important it
is to them - seems to be the relationship.

>The TNT architecure has huge growth potential. Our many worldwide carrier
>customers would never have bought a deadend product. Telco engineers only

I've looked at most of the products in this class.  I just don't see the
base architecture of the TNT expanding as some of the others.  If you 
change the core - which I've been told by some Ascend folks is in the
works - then sure.

>seen any Livingston equipment in any Telco operation. There may be some out
>there somewhere, but I visit telcos around the world and all I see are

There are.  British Telecom is one telco customer I can think of.

>Ascend, Cisco and Nortel/Shiva. That may or may not change with Lucent.
>We'll see.

Definitely.  It has already started to a degree.  I can't talk about a lot
of it for a while yet though.  (The marketing guys would cut out my tongue
and crush my fingers I think...)

>The TNT is a first generation product and it's growing day by day. A year
>from now it will be far more advanced, but there will always be more to do.

Will it still be the same base chassis in a year - or will it be TNT mkII?

>We are certainly a bit guilty of offering too much at times. It stems from
>customer demand, but some customers are understandably overwhelmed. That's
>a challenge for us to improve.

I think that is an issue.  It isn't possible to please everyone all the 
time.  No company has done it.  So you need to decide how broad a base you
want to aim for.  90%  95%  At some point returns drop off.  Don't chase
the feature of the week.  Every time an editorial gets published someone
invariably RFEs that new feature.  And 99% of the time it is dead and never
goes anywhere.  Some companines try to do it all though.  

How many customers by a box for feature X?  How many didn't buy because 
feature Y was missing or broken?  It isn't a B&W choice.  At some point
it becomes a better choice to focus on Y and sacrifice the X market, or
vice-versa.  And it usually isn'g a binary choice.

>If you take the long view, it amazing how far Ascend has come. Just a
>couple of years ago they had less than 300 employees. Up til the merger

I agree.  Ascend has been a rapid growth company.  Livingston has too,
several fold increase in 2 years.  In the meantime a lot of former names
have vanished, and startups have come and gone.  And new ones continue to
arrive - witness AssuredAccess.

But I also think there needs to be pacing.  It is a difference in 
philosophies.  There are dozens of things we can do - we have the technology
and knowhow - but we don't because we are working with a more focused 
drive.  Release a feature and make it solid, then move on and do it again.
Release new generation hardware and build on the existing base.  And this
has grown us quite rapidly.  I've recently seen a number of reports that
list the top 3 concentrator vendors as Ascend, 3Com/USR, Livingston.  A
year ago Livingston wasn't in the market.  And we're still growing fast.
Next year maybe Ascend, Livingston, 3Com/USR...  Ascend has a long lead,
being in the field as long as they have.  But the market is full of rapid
changes.  Who can say for sure what will be the market in a year, or even
six months?  It might blow out and crash...

>Anyone who has worked at a company that has gone through the huge growth
>phase that we have understands that there are plenty of ups and downs. But
>we are still growing, not shrinking!

I've been here two years now and we've had a few periods of very rough
weather.  Grow too fast and you can't staff support.  Support times
went ballastic for a while, and we pissed off a lot of people.  We just
couldn't get good people fast enough, sales outstripped support.  There
have been a number of times some area outraced others, and that probably
isn't over yet.

I respect Ascend as the best competition we have.  I think competition
is a good thing.  It drives innovation, it keeps prices in check, and it
levels the playing field a bit for all these ISPs.

>I can understand your thinking if you were still a small company. But the
>reality today is that customers want total solutions. Don't you work for

But they want high quality total solutions.  Not something where each
until is 90% - a missing feature here, and major bug there, etc.  That is
what I hear, or how I interpret what I hear.  What takes longer.

Releasing 5 products in a rush and then struggling to correct them all
simultaneously.  Or releasing solid products one by one, and building the
line in regular intervals?  I think that is teh different in philosophy.
Ascend seems axious to be first to marker.  Livingston isn't, and would
rather be later to market but with a more robust offering out the door.

There are probably enough of both types of customers out there.

>Lucent now? Don't they have end-to-end solutions? Doesn't Cisco too? That's
>the way of the world now. Ascend wouldn't have survived as simply an access
>concentrator company and neither would Livingston.

I'm not saying they would - because they wouldn't.  But Lucent didn't
start offering end-to-end in a year or so.  Neither did Cisco.  You can't
run headlong into being an general store for access and expect everything to
work well.  To me it seems rushed, and I think that time pressure - whereever
it is coming from - is why things tend to be rough for a while with each
release.

Well, like I said, this is just me.

-MZ
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