Usually, the industry had room for three or four major vendors for each niche. The remaining 20 percent went to one or two other players, such as Ericsson or Siemens, for switching. Transmission equipment sales were split in a similar manner. The vendor world changed rapidly because telephony became a hybrid technology. Market niches can no longer be defined by equipment function because technology blurs the lines between the functions.
Features don t live in switch hardware anymore, but are resident in server software.
Vendors committed to continued industry participation responded to the changes in technology by changing the way they viewed themselves. They became system suppliers and integrators, rather than technology niche vendors. For example, both Lucent and Nortel built upon their own technologies by acquiring companies that had expertise with new data devices. Some vendors outside the traditional telephony business also decided to become participants in telephony, and adapted in a similar manner to gain new market share. Cisco is a good example of such a company.