“WANs on the other hand, represent a major target for [Cisco’s] business development team,” was a sentiment captured in the March 1997 The Red Herring article, Routing the Competition (pp.82–88). At the time, CEO John Chambers admitted his company had arrived late to take advantage of the WAN market opportunity. In a bid to rectify this tardiness Cisco took “a major step toward integration of voice and data with its $4 billion acquisition of Stratacom in April 1996.”
Ed Kozel, Cisco’s chief technology officer and senior vice president of business development, began targeting ISPs and major carriers in 1995 with the Service Provider Line of Business headed by Kevin Kennedy. Both men were reported to have been excited over addressing the emerging “packet over SONET” opportunity. However, Ed had some reservations over the rate of deployment of IP over SONET solutions since, as he said, “most of the world doesn’t have access to SONET fiber.” So, Cisco hedged its bets on what industry standard might win the protocol wars by also supporting the Asynchronous Transfer Mode over SONET approach, favored by many large carriers. It was an uncharacteristically conservative move for Cisco.
Meanwhile, Vinod Khosla located just up the road in Silicon Valley was funding Juniper networks to take on Cisco and capture much of the IP-based business. In addition, he boldly envisioned how startup Fiberlane would produce optical transport (IP over SONET) connections to link enterprise locations. Vinod’s IP+Optical visions would eventually fill a major product void Cisco had not yet filled in its own portfolio.
Optical transport would soon become – by 1998 – the hottest technology and the fastest growth area in the telecommunications sector.
Meanwhile, Vinod Khosla located just up the road in Silicon Valley was funding Juniper networks to take on Cisco and capture much of the IP-based business. In addition, he boldly envisioned how startup Fiberlane would produce optical transport (IP over SONET) connections to link enterprise locations. Vinod’s IP+Optical visions would eventually fill a major product void Cisco had not yet filled in its own portfolio.
Optical transport would soon become – by 1998 – the hottest technology and the fastest growth area in the telecommunications sector.