Happy New Year everyone!  This little tidbit of gossip was brought to my attention:  Nortel assets are on Radware’s radar.  The article speculates that at the price tag of around $30 to $50 million, Radware isn’t looking at the entire Metro Ethernet asset portfolio (valued at around $1 billion).
I think it’s pretty obvious that it’s just going to be the Alteon ADC group and assets that are going to be purchased. Â Alteon hasn’t kept up with the other Enterprise vendors in terms of feature set, but they’ve got a pretty good following.
At a $30 to $50 million price tag, that represents a paltry .5% return (1/200th) on investement of the $8 billion dollar price tag that Nortel paid for Alteon in 2000, during the height of the dot-com-boom.
Ouch.
Nortel hasn’t had much luck lately. Â Their market cap is around $150 million (that’s with an M), having left the realm of the billion-dollar businesses a while ago.
Talk amongst yourselves.
Oooh, will they bring back WebHeads?
Very different architecture but they want the customer base, not the tech. But Radware may have trouble convincing Alteon owners to replace their beloved boxes…will be hard to pry them out of their cold, dead hands.
Interesting move, I still love the Alteon platform but the Nortel support is rubbish since all the good tech guys like Giles went.
I wonder if Radware can bring back some of the Alteon magic ?
Nortel board votes to file for bankruptcy: http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/37246?nlhtspec=rn_011409&nladname=011409 . Thought you might be interested, seeing as how they’re mentioned in this article.