Lucent's silence on MPLS switch signals product's demise
In what we didn’t hear from Lucent last week, we have heard the last of the TMX 880.
Lucent last week disclosed where it is investing for product development – and where it is not – during its fiscal fourth quarter 2002 earnings call. Lucent is investing in metro and long-haul optical, circuit switching, certain areas of circuit-to-packet, wireless, network management and professional services.
It is also investing in migrating its installed base of ATM switch customers to MPLS… but ostensibly through enhancements to its GX-550 switch, which is at least five years old. Lucent never mentioned its plans for the TMX 880 MPLS core switch, and its silence in this regard was deafening.
This week, a Lucent spokesman finally confirmed what many had suspected for weeks: The TMX 880 is being discontinued.
Introduced a year ago and generally available last month, the TMX 880 was Lucent’s strategic offering for next-generation multiservice core networks. It is a 160G bit/sec MPLS packet switch designed to provide a graceful migration from ATM cells to IP/MPLS packets in the core through Fluid Signaling, a Lucent innovation that maps bidirectional ATM permanent virtual circuits into two unidirectional MPLS label-switched paths, and vice versa.
Lucent killed off a previous ATM-based next generation multiservice core switch – the MSC 25000 – in favor of the TMX 880 as the upgrade for its aging installed base of GX-550s. According to a Lucent memo, the MSC 25000 was not a competitive offering and the longevity of ATM was being questioned daily.
But the economic downturn in the telecom industry continues to keep ATM around and push the market for MPLS out. As a result, the TMX 880 was never allowed to graduate from trial to production deployment status (Lucent says it’s in a small number of trials though would not disclose how many; Lucent just announced a big multiservice switching win with China Unicom that does not include the TMX 880).
So it looks like Lucent badly misread the multiservice core switching market again with the TMX 880. Some observers say it’s time for Lucent to exit the market altogether.
Investment firm UBS Warburg suggested Lucent sell its ATM/frame relay multiservice switching business to Cisco for cash, ongoing service and support revenue, and credibility in IP. Lucent would be unsuccessful long-term in the multiservice switching market, and the TMX 880 product and strategy is “more likely to fail than succeed,” UBS Warburg states.
Lucent had no comment on the investment firm’s assertions. But actions speak louder than words.
And by pulling the plug on the TMX 880, Lucent has spoken volumes about the product’s prospects and perhaps its own future in multiservice switching.
