SM: Is this when you began to close the gap on Cisco? EB: There was one play that we used which enabled us to close in on Cisco, and we called it Boundary Routing. Cisco was driven to more complex solutions than us. They positioned routing as something of a magic art, very complicated and
SM: Did the market understand your positioning as an integrated networking solution? EB: I think they did. Of course we were coming from behind in routers, and we were behind SynOptics in hubs, and we were behind others in single categories. We started to strengthen our position in all our segments, and this helped because
Here Anant discusses his final area of innovation in Tilera, which is the piece which really supports their go-to-market strategy and allows companies to become early adopters of multicore processors. SM: What is the final innovation? AA: The fifth and final innovation is in software. The third “P” is programmability. There, we have done some
Eric takes over as CEO of 3Com, and as a first item of business, makes some hardline choices. SM: What catalyzed the CEO change at 3Com? EB: The board realized something needed to be done. In 1989, my two partners at Bridge, Bill Caraco and Judy Estren, left out of frustration. They realized this was
After the merger with 3Com, the company faced some significant internal challenges. There were two opposing business strategies, and clearly only one could be followed. This set the stage for Eric, not yet 35 years old, to become the CEO. SM: Was the 3Com merger when Metcalfe was running it? EB: Bill Krause, Metcalfe was
I have just published an interview with Steve Singh, Concur’s CEO. In it, I trace the Concur (Nasdaq: CNQR) story in a great deal of detail that is well worth understanding, to see why this company has a strong growth opportunity ahead. As I said earlier, the SaaS and Extended Enterprise trend alignment are good
With a solid strategy executed to date, and a pending acquisition of Gelco, it is time to explore the next step in this evolution. One obvious goal would be expansion of the customer base. Here I get more interested in strategic alliances and their potential benefits in accelerating this process. SM: What is your next
It all began exactly 12 years back in August 1995 when Netscape Communications came out with an IPO. With no profit in its book to show, Netscape nevertheless sold stocks worth $2.2 billion. Thus commenced the Dotcom era. InfoSpace founder Navin Jain, who then worked for MSN, soon left to start his own company in