Company type | Public |
---|---|
Nasdaq: WFLT | |
Industry | Networking equipment |
Founded | June 1986 |
Defunct | October 1994 |
Fate | Merged with SynOptics Communications |
Successor | Bay Networks |
Headquarters | Billerica, Massachusetts, US |
Key people | CEO Paul Severino |
Wellfleet Communications, Inc., was an Internet router company founded in 1986 by Paul Severino, Bill Seifert, Steven Willis and David Rowe based in Bedford, Massachusetts, and later Billerica, Massachusetts. In an attempt to more effectively compete with Cisco Systems, its chief rival, it merged in October, 1994 with SynOptics Communications of Santa Clara, California to form Bay Networks in a deal worth US$ 2.7B. [1] [2] Bay Networks would in turn be acquired by Nortel in June, 1998 for US$ 9.1B. [3]
Wellfleet was ranked the fastest-growing company in the United States by Fortune Magazine in both 1992 and 1993. [4] Wellfleet sold routers. [5]
Wellfleet also emphasized on support of the up-and-coming Internet Protocol. In 1991, Cisco led the global multi-protocol router market with a 51% share, whereas Wellfleet was third with only 9% market share. [6] By 1993, Wellfleet had grown to a 14% market share, second only to Cisco's 50%. [7] Wellfleet concluded the best way to gain strategic positioning over Cisco would be to merge with hub manufacturer SynOptics. [8] By combining these technologies, the joined companies could provide their customers with common product interfaces and network management tools. [9]
The resulting merged company, Bay Networks (named as such because Wellfleet was based in Boston, Massachusetts and SynOptics in San Francisco, California, two classic bay cities).
Nortel Networks Corporation (Nortel), formerly Northern Telecom Limited, was a Canadian multinational telecommunications and data networking equipment manufacturer headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. It was founded in Montreal, Quebec in 1895 as the Northern Electric and Manufacturing Company. Until an antitrust settlement in 1949, Northern Electric was owned mostly by Bell Canada and the Western Electric Company of the Bell System, producing large volumes of telecommunications equipment based on licensed Western Electric designs.
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Bay Networks, Inc., was a network hardware vendor formed through the merger of Santa Clara, California, based SynOptics Communications and Billerica, Massachusetts based Wellfleet Communications on July 6, 1994. SynOptics was an important early innovator of Ethernet products, having developed a pre-standard twisted pair 10 Mbit/s Ethernet product and a modular Ethernet hub product that dominated the enterprise networking market. Wellfleet was an important competitor to Cisco Systems in the router market, ultimately commanding up to a 20% market share of the network router business worldwide. The combined company was renamed Bay Networks, as SynOptics was based in the San Francisco Bay Area and Wellfleet in Greater Boston, nearby to Massachusetts Bay.
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