Summary
1. Before this story came out, many industry analysts were thinking it would be nothing short of suicidal for Ciena’s upper management to make a purchase at this time. 2. In general, Ciena does not even seem in the mood to make an acquisition. 3. Fairly fresh off what is increasingly looking like a World Wide Packet pickup fiasco, it may be hard for the optical supplier to pull the trigger.
Analysis
Of course, if it has Ethernet in its name, Ciena is likely to buy it. Seriously, it would be a wise move for the vendor mainly because of the much greater long-haul optical footprint that it would control. Ciena would also acquire some state-of-the-art, high-end optical technology. The big question is whether the supplier would overpay for it – which is what it has tended to do in the past.
One should not be optimistic that this deal will go through. Ericsson should be considered more of a likely candidate to get the sale done.
The source of the article could have been a high-level person at Ciena to float a trial balloon. Obviously, it is also possible that an executive at Nortel wanted to push the sale along.
