|
|
In these days of dramatic change in the networking industry and specific focus on the mergers and acquisitions in the InterNetworking Systems industry, I am often asked what the impact will be on Livingston's business and what our plans are for competing in this sea of change. In this article I will provide some personal perspectives and answers to these questions. The first area we must evaluate are the merits of current common beliefs. Industry pundits are quick to conclude that the recent merger activity carries a clear message from customers who are looking for a single vendor to deliver all of their networking needs. It has even been proposed that customers would rather go to one source that delivers acceptable solutions than to multiple vendors who provide best-of-breed. Unfortunately, this is a rather simplistic view from outsiders who do not have direct insight into the problems and challenges of providing access to the Internet and corporate Intranets. While a properly executed merger can leverage significant organizational and financial resources, it can also impede innovation and responsiveness to customers. Consider, for example, several of Livingston's once most visible competitors who have fallen off of our radar screen since they were acquired--names like Xylogics, Centrum, Telebit, Primary Access, Newport Systems and Combinet. None of these resulted in increased market share for the acquiring company and many of them ended up completely discarding the people and products they acquired. At a core, these mergers could only have succeeded if the original focus of these companies could have been retained. This leads me to Livingston's key business strategy--focus on what we do well, only promise what we can deliver, and focus on customers. Focusing on what we do well has long been the cornerstone of our Total Access solutions. This means refraining from pursuing a product feature set which is all things to all people. Instead we have focused on delivering Internet Access with Reliability, Scalability, Interoperability, and Manageability. Providing Internet Access equipment means that our products deliver the service which directly generates the revenue source of our customers. It is mission critical. Without reliability it is impossible to succeed in the long term. For our customer's businesses to grow they must be able to scale from thousands to millions of subscribers. In addition, we are faced with one of the most unique requirements in the networking industry. Most LAN based and even private WAN based networks are homogeneous with a single group charged with acquiring software and hardware which works seamlessly together. In Internet access we are faced with interoperating with products manufactured by hundreds of different vendors whether they be routers, PC's, or many types of modem devices. Finally, because of the scale of these networks Manageability takes on a new meaning. Instead of the traditional view that management means large quantities of statistics and response to alarms, whistles and sirens; to Livingston management means easy to install, configure and operate. These requirements and the products which result from them can only be clearly understood through close, interactive and dynamic communication with our customers. Who, by the way, are the best real-time communicators in the world because they are the biggest users of the communications vehicle they provide. This means that Livingston's direction is clear. We will stay focused on delivering best of breed products to the Internet community and the Intranets that tie to the Internet. To succeed in doing this we will stay close to our customers to clearly understand the problems they are trying to solve. The success of this strategy is currently allowing Livingston to invest dramatically in new hardware and software features as well as investing in growing both the scale and expertise of our customer support organization. Steve Willens, |
|||
  |
||||
