Mea Culpa, Mea Sucka
Mark Hoover, President, Acuitive, Inc.

I've been asked to come up with some predictions for the new millennium, but why do that when there my not be a new millennium, when we may have to toast our own sourdough bread by holding it between our hands until it is light brown?

So I'll wait until January to provide my fearful predictions. But you may not want to read the January Musing. You may just want to pass altogether. Because contrary to some popular opinions, my record at crystal ball gazing is mixed. Not mixed. Miserable.

Here are some examples:

A year or two ago I could have been accurately quoted as saying that the technology of networking was at a standstill. That there was no interesting innovation going on, just an end-game rash of incremental innovations that may seem important today, but wouldn't tomorrow as the test of time is applied. That start-ups in the networking space would turn brown and die. That the big guys of networking, who own the channel, would happily settle into selling old products rather than continually disrupting their product lines.

Well, with the advent of packet-oriented MAN technologies, Server Load Balancing, caching, DWDM, optical amplifiers/pumps, high end optical cross-connects, rate shaping, VoIP, integrated services over DSL, IP-based Frame Relay, subscriber management systems, and other new technologies and applications, I think I was wrong. I also predicted that investment money would move away from the infrastructure people who build the networks to the application people and businesses that use the network. Wrong again. The best investments over the past 18-24 months have been in the infrastructure space. More specifically, I thought the Nortel Networks acquisition of Bay Networks would be a disaster. A slow moving PBX company buying the #2 enterprise networking company at a time when the enterprise market was dying. So I sold all my Nortel stock (converted from my Bay Networks holdings) at what I thought was a great price of $48. Wrong, wrong, wrong $%$!$! I forgot about a little thing like market domination of key and fast growing optical networking segments!

I could have also been quoted predicting a small crash of the Cisco stock price. Not because I don't think Cisco is a solid company - they are the best company I ever had a chance to observe, work with, and compete against. But because I felt that their size would make it difficult to grow enough to earn their multiple, and that there was bound to be a reduction in the overall quality of the personnel due to growth, acquisitions, etc. I also thought they'd experience some difficulties moving from dominating the enterprise market to playing in the service provider market in any area other than routing. I knew they'd get it right eventually, but I thought it would take awhile and Wall Street would over-react to the process. Well, wrong again (so far).

I also rashly opined at one time that VoIP would be a niche market. Maybe a Delaware-sized niche. But now I see that it will be a niche roughly the size of Canada and Alaska combined. Wideband integrated access for now is a very interesting space. And then the process of completely converting the PSTN over the next 10-12 years will engender a large and growing opportunity for various vendors attacking the market in different ways.

For most of my life I could have been accurately quoted as saying that marriage was for suckers. It reduced cash flow and flexibility with little ROI. Not only wrong - but idiotic. Now I'm married and it's the best thing that ever happened to me. Now I know it's not a matter of strategy, but execution (i.e. pick the right girl).

It has also been pointed out to me that I owe John Jaeger an apology for last month's Musing because I undervalued him. In the scenario where Acuitive sold one share of stock publicly (out of 10 million issued), and John's wife bought it for $1,000,000, I questioned whether this meant that Acuitive was worth its calculated market capitalization - ten billion dollars. As one sharp eyed reader, Suds Jain from Broadcom, pointed out to me, the actual calculated market capitalization should have been ten trillion dollars, much closer to John's actual value.

I'd like to say that this supposed math error was a test on my part to judge the intellectual capacity and care-of-reading of the Musing readers, but it was just another mistake on my part. (Good thing it wasn't a test, as only one reader picked up on the error. I expect that Dan Matte from F5 Networks would have picked it up, but he probably got confused about the difference between American dollars and Canadian dollars. Here's the difference Dan - you can spend American dollars on goods other than hockey pucks).

So with this as a frame of reference, I guess you are all excited about hearing my predictions for the new millennium in next month's Musing, right?

Before I close for the year, I'd like to reflect a bit on the last few years. For me, it's been a fantastic time. Starting Acuitive is the best work-related thing I have ever done. It has re-energized me, got me thinking again, challenged me to stay up-to-date in a variety of areas, and driven me to figure out unique ways to deliver great value to our clients. It's also provided me an opportunity to work with the greatest team of people I have ever worked with or observed - the Acuitive employees.

But we work more with our clients than one another, and that again is a plus. We have the wonderful option of being choosy who we work with. With a couple of notable exceptions, we've found working with our clients to be energizing, purposeful, and just plain fun. We've made new friends and deepened relationships with old ones. To all of our clients and friends, let me close this by wishing you all a happy holiday and a fun and productive new millennium (assuming you don't have to spend all your time riding a bicycle made of cocoanuts to make electricity while talking to Mary Ann).

(volume 2, number 12)

 

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