Allied Telesyn

SIMPLY CONNECTING THE WORLD

Principals

Succeeding In A Global Marketplace

The worldwide demand for global information access has spawned a number of suppliers of increasingly sophisticated communications and networking technology. One global market leader that stands out in the critically important network technology market is Allied Telesyn, whose founder, Takayoshi Oshima, began with a simple goal: to design and manufacture simple, highly reliable, standards-based network hardware with the flexibility and affordability to make it work for businesses of all sizes. It works.

Today, Allied Telesyn credits a great deal of its international recognition and respect both to its founding philosophy and to its international collaborators. The Allied Telesyn Group, consisting of Allied Telesyn International and Allied Telesis KK, succeeds worldwide with group companies in 11 countries around the world and more than 1,400 employees. That substantial worldwide presence means that Allied Telesyn does not just sell products through international channels—Allied Telesyn is there—developing the products that the local markets need, and sharing its networking expertise with local market experts. Local market experts who truly are collaborators—with the autonomy to choose the best products for their local markets and to market them according to local needs.

Succeeding in a global marketplace is no small feat, but Allied Telesyn is well positioned and highly committed to maintaining its leadership position around the world.

Keep it Simple

In the mid-1980’s, very basic network hardware was still expensive to manufacture, primarily because of the large numbers of components required. Products such as transceivers were large, expensive and susceptible to component failure. Allied Telesyn’s approach to product development utilized advanced semiconductor technology to reduce component count, which resulted in smaller, more reliable, more affordable hardware. By achieving those goals and building compact, reliable, affordable networking components, Allied Telesyn helped networks grow.

From an initial product line of simple, extremely reliable and affordable Ethernet transceivers, Allied Telesyn has expanded by applying the same principles of simplicity, reliability and economy to a broad range of sophisticated Ethernet, Fast Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet products. The recent incorporation of Internet and WAN connectivity into the Allied Telesyn product line further expands the breadth of the Allied Telesyn product portfolio. All of the company’s products—hubs, switches, adapter cards, small office networking solutions, wide-area connectivity solutions, media converters and network management software products—are designed and built to meet Allied Telesyn’s key requirements: make it better, make it more reliable, and make it affordable.

The success of networks built on Allied Telesyn products is reflected in the company’s continued growth and success as well. Over the past five years, Allied Telesyn International has grown by 40%, and the company is well positioned to continue the trend. With projected worldwide revenues of $360 million for 1999, up from $323 million in 1998, Allied Telesyn International will continue the steady, stable growth in product lines and revenue that keep the company strong. With established leadership positions in key network technology sectors and consistent investment in new technologies such as switching, fiber optics, and wide-area connectivity, Allied Telesyn is perfectly positioned to continue and expand its growth and leadership.

Twelve years of success in the computer networking market confirms that Allied Telesyn’s strategy is a sound one. The company will continue to design, engineer and manufacture the diverse range of products that customers need to build, expand and upgrade networks, and will ensure that those products are adaptable, reliable, affordable and easy-to-use—and backed by exceptional customer service and support.

Build on Success

Allied Telesyn’s considerable and on-going success can be attributed to a number of product, service and market philosophies that will continue to differentiate it from other global vendors. Having built a strong reputation for responding to mass-market demand with better, faster and more cost-effective products, the company has earned great customer loyalty. As the success of many small and medium-sized businesses becomes increasingly dependent on the wide range of communication and information disbursement and retrieval options available via the World Wide Web, connectivity to the Internet is rapidly becoming a critical element for success. A partner in many of their networks, Allied Telesyn knows what it takes to make a network work for small to medium-sized businesses.

The company’s recent acquisition of the Internet Access division of Teltrend, Inc., further demonstrates a strong commitment to making practical technology accessible to small and medium sized businesses—and to help businesses plan for the future. As the convergence of the LAN and the WAN to transport voice and data moves closer to the point of being a practical reality, small and medium-sized businesses need an entrée. As an established leader in LAN connectivity, Allied Telesyn’s WAN connectivity product lines bring its customers a broad portfolio of proven LAN to WAN connectivity solutions, with the price and reliability engineering that customers have come to expect from Allied Telesyn.

Independence has played a large role in helping Allied Telesyn achieve its goals up to this point. The company’s considerable successes have allowed it to remain a privately held company, and thus to pursue its successful strategies without distraction. Those strategies well in place, the company plans to seek a public offering during 1999. This offering will help the company to gain access to the large financial resources that will move Allied Telesyn through its next stage of growth to make the company even more competitive as we move into the next millennium.

Post-sales support and customer service have also been key to the company’s success. A pioneer in offering extended and lifetime warranties on its products, Allied Telesyn gained customer loyalty by giving customers their promise of free telephone technical support and a no-quibble advanced replacement policy for faulty products.

Focus and commitment to the core business of manufacturing and marketing affordable technologies for the volume market have also served the company well. In an environment of profit chasing side-enterprises, Allied Telesyn has been successful—and profitable—sticking to what it does best.

Allied Telesyn is committed to bringing customers both tried-and-true, market-proven technologies and products on the cutting-edge, in all cases bringing exceptional overall value through quality, reliability, ease of installation, high-quality support and affordability. Over the past year, Allied Telesyn has made especially strong offerings in fiber optic networking hardware components in all product groups; in advanced managed switching products, including Layer 3 devices and Gigabit Ethernet; and in network management, by introducing web-based management for monitoring and maintaining the network via an Internet browser. Back to basics, though, Allied Telesyn will continue to design and develop new media products—the transceivers, repeaters and media converters that allow networks to grow and evolve—and will remain the world’s dominant supplier of media products. Easy to install and use unmanaged hubs and switches; simple, affordable Ethernet adapters; and shared remote connectivity tools remain as important to our business as they are to the budget conscious small office and home office environments.

Switches

Allied Telesyn’s switch product offerings are broad and growing fast. The current portfolio addresses today’s homogeneous networks and facilitates their growth by offering combinations of Ethernet, Fast Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet and ATM, in both copper and fiber media. Stackable switches, ranging in size from two to 48 ports, work for networks of all sizes—from the smallest small business network to large enterprise WANs. In switches as in all product lines, Allied Telesyn holds to its simplicity and value commitment by continuing to develop, manufacture and market a strong portfolio of aggressively priced products that are easy to install and support. Allied Telesyn’s managed and unmanaged switch portfolio will continue to grow in step with the market changes, as the company endeavors to make switching affordable and effective for all networks.

Hubs

Allied Telesyn is the indisputable leader in the market for unmanaged Ethernet hubs, and continues to employ its expertise to leverage that strength effectively with product lines like the new LanEdge™ small office solutions family. Allied will continue to strengthen its leadership in the hub market with Ethernet, Fast Ethernet and dual-speed products that lead the market in overall value. The company manufactures a full line of intelligent Ethernet hubs and local bridges, both stackable and rackmountable, including the only stackable hub on the market that has both redundant SNMP and hot-swappable modules to safeguard the network in case of failure or media change. Allied Telesyn managed hubs provide advanced features, such as LAN security, virtual LANs, and RMON support.

Transceivers & Repeaters

Allied Telesyn’s transceiver, repeater and converter products have established a clear worldwide leadership position. The company’s micro, single-port, and multiport transceivers offer inexpensive, direct connections for all media types, including twisted pair, fiber optic, and coaxial cable. Its micro-transceivers provide easy connectivity among many different cable types, and micro-repeaters allow network managers to extend the reach of the LAN by connecting more users over greater distances using a variety of media. AUI fanouts and several styles of unmanaged hubs and small form factor switches provide inexpensive but effective connections to independent workgroups, large concentrators, or LAN backbones. The company will continue to aggressively maintain and grow its market leading position with a mix of new and improved rack-mountable products for emerging technologies such as single-mode fiber, Fast Ethernet, and Gigabit Ethernet.

Media Converters

Media conversion is one of the fastest growing segments of the networking industry, and continues to accelerate as networks grow and evolve. Media converters connect dissimilar cable and connectors. By performing that transition, media converters make it possible to mix media and speed on a network to optimize price/ performance goals, whether extending legacy networks with the latest technology, or connecting inexpensive, lower bandwidth desktops to a state of the art fiber optic backbone. Small, two-port switches, new to the media conversion family, add security and store-and-forward capability to the conversion.

Allied Telesyn is the media conversion leader, and is committed to maintaining that status by providing the most diverse portfolio of media converters for current and emerging technologies, including single-mode fiber, next generation fiber cabling and connectors and Gigabit Ethernet.

Adapter Cards

Allied Telesyn established its leadership in the fiber optic networking market with fiber optic adapters, and intends to extend that leadership. At the same time, as in the company’s other product lines, Allied Telesyn will continue to nurture the traditional copper adapter card market, which continues to be the value leader. The company offers a complete range of Ethernet adapter cards to support the leading network technologies, architectures, and operating environments. As well as continuing to drive down the cost of desktop copper and fiber adapters, over the past year, Allied Telesyn has asserted its adapter card leadership in the area of portable PC connectivity, with several high performance, low-cost, standards-compliant CardBus adapters.

Small Office Solutions

Allied Telesyn’s new LanEdge product family leverages the company’s leadership in hubs and its strong small office networking presence to provide state-of-the art, reliable and economical connectivity tools in the configurations that work best for small offices. The LanEdge product family is a set of products that make networking pay off for small businesses, including ISDN and analog remote access connectivity devices, fast print servers, hubs and switches. The entire LanEdge product family is supported by Allied Telesyn’s unbeatable free technical support, and is fully-compliant with industry networking standards and with all popular operating systems, including Novell NetWare and Microsoft Windows 98, 95 and NT.

Internet and Wide Area Network Connectivity

Allied Telesyn will begin introducing new WAN connectivity product lines through its well-established sales channels during the second half of 1999. Further expanding the breadth of the company’s product portfolio, these WAN and Internet multi-service access products include solutions for PSTN, ISDN and xDSL, as well as T1/E1, frame relay and leased-line connections. Consistent with the company’s understanding of the needs of small to medium business customers, these new WAN connectivity product lines incorporate the latest security features to ensure that the customer network is protected—especially important with increased use of ‘always on’ Internet and WAN connectivity. Of course, all of these new connectivity products benefit from Allied Telesyn’s strengths in cost and reliability engineering—and provide precisely the breadth of functionality that small and mid-sized businesses require, at price points they can afford, and with the reliability that makes Allied Telesyn a trusted networking partner.

Management

An important factor in ease of use and low overall cost of ownership is easy management. Allied Telesyn is committed to providing solid tools for the network manager. All of Allied Telesyn’s managed hubs and switches include SNMP agents, Telnet support and local management, and many new and coming switches include web-based management for network management via the Internet using a web browser. Allied Telesyn also offers the AT-View family of software products, which are designed to assist system administrators with networks of any size—from the smallest to the largest.

Working with a Winner:
Allied Telesyn Partnership

Succeeding in today’s fast-paced, ever-changing global marketplace can be a challenge, but with the right resources solid products, outstanding employees, and top-notch partners—Allied Telesyn has done just that to capture and maintain a worldwide leadership position in networking. The company’s ability to deliver a comprehensive portfolio of reliable, standards-based networking technologies worldwide at affordable prices and to support them internationally with extended warranties and free technical support attracts exceptional partners to represent its products in multiple markets.

All of Allied Telesyn’s strategic partners recognize the value of working with a company that provides strong margin potential from a robust product line, backed by established worldwide leadership positions in transceivers, media converters, unmanaged hubs and fiber-based networking products. All of its partners also recognize the value of working with a company that values them. Allied Telesyn has proven its ability to work closely with its strategic partners at all operational and administrative levels for maximum business efficiency, and to see those partners as collaborators, not merely as a sales channel.

All of these positive qualities enable Allied Telesyn not only to attract the best product representation, but also the best in complementary product and corporate relationships. Allied Telesyn has been fortunate to be able to implement successful strategic business partnerships with large, multi-national integrators and OEMs—a winning proposition Allied Telesyn, and for every one of its strategic partners and representatives.