US telecommunications equipment manufacturer Lucent Technologies Inc, has put forward the first part of its strategy to turn into a fully fledged datacoms player, with its plans for the recently acquired remote access specialist Livingston Technologies Inc. Lucent paid a hefty $650m for Livingston last October (CI No 3,269). In an attempt to boost Livingston’s 11% market share, it will be allowed to operate as an independent business division of Lucent called the Remote Access Business Unit. Livingston has ambitious plans to expand within the year, with the building of larger higher capacity chassis based remote access servers, and the addition of fax and voice over IP capabilities to its servers. Also it will use Lucent’s expertise in high end carrier systems, the massive Research and Development facility, Bell Laboratories, and a larger investment budget to improve its product portfolio. Lucent isn’t yet big enough in datacoms to be classd a fully fledged player like Cisco Systems Inc, Bay Networks Inc or 3Com Corp, but is apparently going to put that right with a series of changes in February.
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