Let’s Resurrect Bay Networks

wow.. how soon we forget and how quick we are to point fingers.

Bay was becoming a non entity in 1998. There was little to know vision for multimedia communications other than “INCA”, We had little IP innovation of vision. The only glimmer of hope was the Accelar and Contivity acquistions, but there were lots of internal fights about R&D dollars with the Centillion teams.

We were still hocking ATM risers when Cisco was pushing 100Mbs Enet.. gee.. guess who won that argument. Bay tried to play catch up with Accelar, but failed.

There were two idiots in the leadership from Welfleet and SynOptics who didnt’ get along. You had the Bobby Johnson cronies from Centillion who just wanted out. A CTO who still throught FDDI was the greatest thing since sliced bread.. and would tell customers that when he went on sales calls while you were trying to sell the wonderful ATM / LANE story.

You had PLM making brilliant decisions like not support ISP features for Welfleet routers, like channelized DS-3/OC-3/OC-12 POS and OC-3 POS on Contivity. Or a decent command line… how many Cisco routers do the ISPs buy and resell now?

Be careful of what you ask for. I hate Nortel with unbridled passion, but the whole, we don’t understand data and IP, started with Bay.

But maybe, with a new focus on just the voice and UC/SOA technology it could be something new and better.

Is this an April fools joke?

If this guy can do it, go for it. Nortel only worked to destroy Bay Networks when they bought it.

After hearing McHugh speak, I only have good things to say about him.

For what it's worth, his vision of where to take Enterprise Data equipment is spot on. When Nortel acquired Bay, it was so that they would have switches to connect their voice equipment. And that's how Data at Nortel has been managed for the past, well…ever.

He came to Nortel with full knowledge of the companies dire situation and CH 11 filings. He came under the premise that he would be able to run the Networking Solutions group as a full fledged Data offering, and not just a means to connect IP Phones to the network.

I find it refreshing that someone at this level is in the company making decisions and opposing the traditional Nortel nod. Most of the decisions made to the direction of products have been made completely out of touch of what the customer actually needs and wants. I think he sees this and is reflecting it in his investment in portfolios.

Let's just hope he wasn't too late to the game.

NORTEL should drop the name and return to its original name NORTHERN ELECTRIC LTD.

and reincarnate BAY NETWORKS. HALLELUIA!!! Jesus is coming!!!

People will soon forget that name NORTEL NETWORKS.!!! Like

ENRON and some other NA companies rocked by scandals & fraud!!!

Hopefully there will be a great miracle come July 30, 2009!

Naaaaaaaaaaaa! They will probably asked for another 3 months extension!

LOOPHOLES! LOOPHOLES! LOOPHOLES! anyone?

Branding changes by themselves are pointless. No CIO in his right mind is going to buy from an entity controlled by the stooges running Nortel regardless of what the label says. Doing so would be career suicide.

Having said that, I think McHugh is thinking the right way. Changing the structure of Nortel into more focused and autonomous entities, led by people who know the business well, is the way to go. Partial spin-outs to create JVs with more market reach is also an option.

Again though, as long as MZ and his stooges are at the head of Nortel, this dialog is just jibber-jabber. No CIO in his/her right mind is going to buy from a Nortel company while these parasites are still there. The only plan these guys have for Nortel is liquidation.

From what I understand, this gentleman wants to re-create a data-only company. I think this is not a good idea nowadays. Bay had a great solution in routers, LAN switches (both L2 Synoptics & L3 Rapid City), Remote Access (Xylogics), VPN (Contivity), WLAN and Network Management software (among other products). But did not have neither telephony nor applications technologies at all. Trying to mimic something such as Enterasys or Foundry is a mistake. You have to have a complete Enterprise potfolio: Data + telephony + applications + services. Not having that is going straight to the precipice once again. And this one is for all!

Lets get some good marketing slogans:

Bay: A Failure Before, But Look At Us Now!
Take Away the Nortel, Add a Bay, and you get Bay Networks
Cisco, do not cross the Line of Death, signed Bay Networks
Lets Bring Back the Boston Braves and Bay Networks!
The Judge was Away so we Brought Back Bay Networks!
Never Mind MPLS and V6, you will love our IPV4 Product Line

For some strange reason even with Nortel totally falling apart, some have this idea for an emergence of some form. Lets be honest, its over……

Avaya did just recently stop comp'ing sales of Extreme Switches for Avaya DT Reps

this is BS. Bay was not a perfect company but was making money and had products that sold to loyal customers. Nortel came in and made many changes to the detriment of the business. in the past 10 year, director after director, gm after gm complained about the decisions that were made after the purchase like reducing the bay's trained sales force, unbalanced commissions on data vs. voice products, etc. what do you expect when your get rid of the data sales people and let the voice guys sell a product that they know not much about and make less commission on per box?
No guarantees that Bay would have been better off, had it not been purchased by Nortel but it must have value that John McHugh is taking a risk on.
I was very surprised when he took the job considering the state of biz last year. It just goes to show the potential of enterprise side data products.

No disrespect meant to the real sales guys. I agree that there were/are some truly exceptional Bay sales folks who did an outstanding job of selling. Unfortunately it was Schilling's brilliant idea of the “Direct Touch” organization that took what used to be a small Global Account Coupon Clippers group to a massive group of Coupon Clippers on Steriods. What had worked for Bay did not work for Nortel's traditional voice customers and distribution partners.

Just another classic example of bad management and egos getting in the way. Just like the guy in the article's idea to break off the data portion of Enterprise. Another classic case of someone coming into Nortel who doesn't understand the customers or the business.

Enterprise needs a buyer for it all. Nothing will survive alone.

Agreed.

But for the record. Schilling was an NT guy…

Hear! Hear! Stick a fork in it, its done!

“The key thing to remember in today's environment is that you can't succeed if you require the customer to be completely in the bed with you.”

That seems to work for Cisco. Call Manager Express = all Cisco network or nothing.

sorry, I forgot to be concise.

If you aren't the 800lb Gorilla in the marketplace then you can't succeed if you require the customer to be completely in the bed with you. You have to be able to inter operate and provide similar / exact / better services at a better value to break into the market.

But then again, we can ask IBM about being the Gorilla in the market place and see how it worked out for them.

You should take a walk through a data center sometime. Believe it or not there are still folks out there with some Bay branded gear still in the racks. And how long has it been? Over 10 years?

In any case, the “Bay Networks” brand has a better standing in the data world than “Nortel Networks.” Not many folks think “Nortel Networks == Data” (nor did they ever). And worse due to recent evens, a lot of folks simply think “Nortel Networks == failed business.”

So I'm not saying a renaming will miraculously start selling more gear. And I don't think Mr McHugh is saying that either. He's just saying treat data as a valid business unit. It deserves a little autonomy…

Got your point Mr? Ok I have to remind Mr. Mark Evans about
something!!!

Yes, how could I forget the BNR place? Those were the days
of MERIDIAN brands he he he he! Just what happened to
the great DV-1 product?

from an email I sent to Broadband Bill January 3, 2008 when we both predicted Nortel would end up right whre it is …deader than token ring and about as useful in today's world……

Too bad Z wouldn’t listen. The road ahead is only going to get worse, much worse. There is no place for NT to get well. Even if there were, Z doesn’t have the execute level beneath his cabinet to get there. Conventional carriers as customers are passé, yet the inner workings and political power bases within NT are built upon these legacy relationships. Their mind set around “protecting” those relationships has completely hamstrung Z’s efforts.

Enterprise which is the fastest growing and most profitable part of the business has its major path to market via the legacy carriers; VZ, AT&T, SPRINT. Those channel relationships are not managed by Enterprise employees, but rather by NT Carrier Group employees. This has had catastrophic results in two key areas. New channel development was completely checked so as not to “upset” the relationships with these dinosaurs, and because of the prolonged ratification process required by these companies to place new product, all technical advantage NT might have had in the marketplace was lost to the 18 month vetting process. Big doesn’t eat small, fast eats slow. There isn’t much slower in the business world than big phone companies. NT’s continued reliance upon and fool hardy allegiance to this path-to-market has probably killed the company as we know it.

Enterprise may be growing, but there are troubling, inescapable realties. First, the majority of the revenue in Enterprise is about one degree of separation away from the PBX. That revenue will be gone in very short order. The PBX will be replaced by generic computer platforms running applications from either Cisco or Microsoft. My bet obviously is MS – more open and part-and-particle of an Enterprise software architecture.

Secondly, NT is just simply not relevant in the space outside the PBX. Being number two in market share to Cisco really doesn’t matter if they hold 80 percent share and you hold only a portion of the remaining 20 percent. There was ample opportunity for NT to earn more in this space – it obviously could have been done i.e. Juniper, F5, Foundry, Force10 have all gained firm seating in a space NT missed. Again the Carrier powerbase within NT assured a clean miss. At the very most critical time for aligning new L2/L3 technologies to the rapidly changing market place, NT assigned the critical data portfolio to an individual that had spent his entire career to that point in PLM producing products that generated dial tone.

In a space where the platform is upgraded every 18 months and replaced every 36 months, NT picked a leader who was used to 5 to 7 year development cycles and had no meaningful view into customers. As you’ve recently seen firsthand, something as compelling as virtualization in the data center is something NT will not have a market ready solution to place. Everyone started in the same place for this coming sea change in the L2/L3 market, and NT is already dead last and candidly has no chance now to catch up.

– as for buying Enterprise or even part of it and re-rebranding it as BayNetworks…way, way too late…and for PBX part of the business, Nortel doesn't own it's own installed base like AVAYA, it's owned by Nortel's partners, so there is no cash stream there to move like there was for AVAYA.

IDIOTS at the top….weak execute layer directly below them that was terrified of Z's team and did the Nortel nod and kissed up rather than fight back — if they knew what to do, many didn't, and most of those mid-levels are still there.

It wouldn't have been that difficult…just too damn bad.

Looks like McHugh is trying to land a post-divestiture role with Avaya. I assume they will politely decline to take Hackney.

Did you see lots of Nortel ERS's?

They are smoking a lot of weed. The good one.

Realistically he reports to Hackney who hired him. This site doesn't think much of Hackney so why does anyone think that McHugh actually has any power or authority to make any significant change. His statements are just a tool in the on-going and on-going high-stakes negotiations that are going on. It is meant to force someones hand or to negotiate a better deal that lines some NT exec's pockets.

I didn't see ANY Nortel; saw Cisco, F5, HP, etc. but no Nortel, which is when I knew the end was near (and tried to communicate the same w/Z who never visited a single data center)..–bb

Great summary; even VCs know a brown-noser when they see one…–bb

I'd have to agree. There is a lot of nostalgia talk on all sides of NT. And sadly even if data was spun off, we'd be entering the market with a bunch of mediocre products. Years of R&D underfunding and de-emphasis have attributed to that…

But since this story got out, there has been a bit of a swell in the old Bay faithful. A lot of former Bay folks are apparently ready to get in line and follow this man off the cliff if needed. That at least says something.