2. The Cost, $C, of hiring a repairman for H hours is given by C = 50 + 25h.

A. What does the repairman charge to walk in the door? B. What is his hourly rate?

3. The population a town, t years after it is founded, is given by P(t) = 5000 + 350t.

A. What is the population when it is founded? B. What is the population of the town two years after it is founded?

4. Find the slope and Y-intercept for each of the following:

a. -2y= -5x+9

b. Y = -16 - 4(-5 -3x)

c. 4x + 3y =-12

d. 5y - 3x - 10 = 0 5.

Find the equation of a line that passes through (6,7) and (6,1)

6.Find an equation of a line that is parallel to 3x + 5y = 6 and passes through (0, 5)

7. The total cost C of a yellow cab call lasting N minutes is $4.75 plus an additional charge of $2.50/mile.

A. Use a linear equation to describe the scenario B. How long was the cab ride if the total cost of the fare was $38.50?

Solve the following system of equations algebraically and check

a. 7x + 5y = -1

11x + 8y = -1

b. 5x + 2y = 1

2x - 3y = 27

8. Solve the following system of equationss graphically.

Y = -2X + 7

Y = 4X + 11

this is a personal question but feel free to talk about your self i will edit some stuff

biology is the course please type the anwers at least one to two pages

1. One topic we will touch on in this course is heredity. To get you thinking about science and its application in your life, pick a trait or characteristic that you appreciate or are proud of that was passed on by your parents, or a trait or characteristic of yourself that you would want to pass on to the next generation. Share with us that trait or characteristic and why that makes you who you are.

2. Also, tell us what you hope to get out of this course and/or what questions you want to have answered. Feel free to share a picture of yourself in a favorite spot (e.g., at the park with your dog), and tell us why you like that place.

1. Using the paragraphs you wrote in the Module 1 Required: Maintaining Academic Integrity in Original Writing assignment, copy and paste the paragraphs below and complete the following:

   • Locate one peer-reviewed source in the University Library from EBSCOhost based on the topic of your paragraph.
   • Insert a paraphrase, direct quotation, or summary into your paragraph using the peer-reviewed source.
   • Create an APA-formatted in-text citation for the peer-reviewed source.
   • Create an APA-formatted reference for the peer-reviewed source.
2. Question 1

   1 Point

   Paste your paragraphs here and create an APA-formatted in-text citation for the peer-reviewed source.

What is academic integrity from module 1 was informing me on referring to the school reference center in the library to help from committing plagiarism. So, by doing all the steps correctly in writing a paper plagiarism would not occur. So, I feel as if you don't follow the academic integrity of using false information. So as a student and getting performance feedback by a professor need to staff helps in knowing and participating into university policy for regarding misconduct specific to the university, program and course. So as a student and a paper are plagiarized because of some time being lazy and waiting to the last minute to do a paper, but also by not doing the citation in the paper. Also, by just adding their name on someone else paper and turning it in. So, by doing these things for a paper It shows the lack of confidence one may have in self. But if they use the university resource material It may guide a student to use their own exposition or argument and words in a paper.

So, when your finding ways out to avoid plagiarism you should take into consideration the following: You can talk with your professor to get an idea of where you can start getting your information from. So if during your writing you find yourself with a question or concern about how to cite something or if it needs to be cited all ,do not hesitate to speak with your professor to gain ideas when you go to the center of writing excellence. So, a student should consider checking your work and add quotations for cited information that may be used in a paper. So, if you are still not sure that your work is correctly cited, consider checking the paper yourself before submitting it before It shows that you had plagiarized your paper. So by doing it will make you have confident and start making you pay more attention to your note taking and adding citations to your notes before you have doubt about your work early on and you can go back and add the necessary information. But if you don't remember all the steps and you still have doubt and you have followed the university center of writer excellence ,but also consider getting a fellow students who can provide feedback to help guide you in the right direction so it wouldn't occur.

3. Paste your paragraphs here and create an APA-formatted in-text citation for the peer-reviewed source.

4. Question 2

   1 Point

   Create an APA-formatted reference for the peer-reviewed source.

“As the Internet of things advances, the very notion of a clear dividing line
between reality and virtual reality becomes blurred, sometimes in creative
ways.” Geoff Mulgan, University College London

What is the “Internet of Things” and what are what are the roles of the different
company functions in it’s implementation?

You are the new accountant for ABC, Co. ABC, Co. is a plumbing supply and installation company.

Your boss is the President, Mr. Bigg.

As the accountant, it is your job to explain to Mr. Bigg the following accounting terms.

1. What is a chart of accounts?

2. What are adjusting journal entries?

3. What is an income statement?

Based on your course work of accounting and information systems course (ACC 4310) at your University, what would you recommend to Mr. Bigg to improve his business in regards to the following situations?

1. Accounts Receivables are billed and due at 30 days from invoice, however, most customers tend to pay up to 45 days. The company needs to improve cash flows.

2. Several customers have bounced checks and this causes issues, especially the $25.00 fee charged from the bank?

3. The company needs capital for expansion, to purchase materials, and new equipment. Why would you suggest to Mr. Bigg.

Please read the case and answer the following questions

STATE UNIVERSITY

ACADEMIC DEPARTMENT

Background

The Internal Audit Department of a state-supported university was in the process of performing a scheduled audit of a school within the university that had several academic departments. The internal auditor developed an audit program, which included auditing academic departments within the school having potentially higher risk levels, based on factors such as funding levels, number of funding sources, and number of students. Internal Audit performed this type of audit each year rotating between the various schools within the institution. Audit objectives routinely included evaluating compliance with university policies and procedures relating to procurement, payroll, and cash collections and deposits.

Selected Department

Departments were selected based on the criteria of the audit objectives and discussions with school management. One of the academic departments selected had approximately 30 faculty members, seven administrative staff members, and a nationally recognized graduate program. In addition to being responsible for the academic programs, the department also conducted several functions that provided contract services to the community on a fee basis. Each fund source was recorded in a separate account and the department had in excess of 90 accounts. The fund types included state funding, private donations, state and federal grants and contracts, and industry sponsored contracts. Fund amounts ranged from a low of $1,500 to several which exceeded $100,000. Each type of fund had different requirements relating to how and for what the funds could be expended.

Participants

Faculty members were paid a salary for providing teaching, research, and performing community service in the name of the university. Their contracts were typically for nine months each year. They were allowed to supplement their salary for the remaining three months of the year through various types of grants and contracts. Faculty members were also allowed to work, usually as consultants, up to one day per week outside of the university and were paid directly by the party with whom they were consulting. The consulting fees were personal income for the faculty member and were not processed through the university in any manner.

The department chair had been at the university for more than ten years and was recognized as a faculty leader through various programs at the university. He had held the chair position for five years and was classified as an instructional faculty member with an administrative appointment. Under the guidelines of the university, he received additional compensation for the extra administrative duties he performed as the chair. He was considered a 12-month employee. Therefore, he was not allowed to supplement his university salary in any manner, including summer school teaching or additional funding through a grant.

The university policy stated that department chairs reported to the Dean of the academic college or school. However, in this case there had historically been little or no review of the department’s finances by the Dean or his representative.

The core administrative staff had been in the department for a number of years. The staff consisted of the chair’s secretary (three years in the department), a business manager (more than 10 years in the department), and a fiscal tech (more than 20 years in the department). The business manager was responsible for the fiscal management of the department and the fiscal tech prepared the financial transactions at the direction of the chair and the business manager.

The financial transactions of the department were initiated using the university’s on-line financial accounting system. In order to provide the chair and appropriate faculty members with timely management data, the fiscal tech also used a series of spreadsheets to manage each account. These spreadsheets provided up to the minute information regarding each account rather than the reports from the university system, which were usually received about ten days after the end of each month.

The fiscal tech prepared the financial transactions based on direction from the chair, appropriate faculty members, or the business manager. The business manager was responsible for approving all financial transactions. However, the business manager shared her password with the fiscal tech as she believed that she didn’t have time to approve each transaction. The fiscal tech then had the ability to approve and enter transactions, despite the fact that she only had the on-line authority to initiate transactions.

Within the last year, the administrative staff had received salary increases for exemplary performance. The raises were given at the direction of the chair.

Situation

The institution had numerous financial policies and procedures that were fragmented and not well communicated. These procedures were available on-line. Training was available, but it was not required. The department personnel had received the training. Implementation of the financial policies and procedures was delegated to the departmental level with minimal review by central organizations to ensure adherence to these policies and procedures.

The internal auditor performed the review. The major finding resulted in a recommendation that monthly reconciliations of each departmental account be performed and documented and that each account be signed by the business manager, signifying certification that each expenditure was made in accordance with university policy and for university related purposes. The recommendation was fully supported by the Dean and he ordered all departments to immediately implement the recommendation.

Allegations

When the audit was completed and the above finding was being implemented, university management received an anonymous tip. The caller alleged that a department chair had been paying personal bills from university accounts and that other irregularities had occurred within the chair’s department.

Required. Use diffrent codes and regualtions to answer questions (AU and SAS).

1. Upon receiving notification of the anonymous tip, outline the actions that you would take as the university’s auditor.

2. What controls would you look for to determine where the potential weaknesses were located?

3. How would you strengthen controls at the university level to decrease the likelihood of this type of occurrence?

Assume that at maximum hourly productions levels, the United States can produce either 8 yards of fabric or 4 bushels of wheat, whereas Japan can produce either 5 yards of fabric or 6 bushels of wheat. Based on this information,

At your university, 40% of the undergraduates are from out of state. If you randomly select six of the undergraduates, what is the probability that

(a) All are from within the state?


(b) All are from out of state?


(c) Exactly two are from within the state?


(d) At least four are from within the state?

Scott Mcnealy and Sun Microsystems

Abstract:

Scott McNealy had been the CEO of Sun Microsystems, a company that he had co-founded in 1984, for 22 years. In April 2006, he announced his decision to step down in favor of Sun's president and COO Jonathan Schwartz.

This case study discusses the various events at Sun under McNealy's leadership. It traces the company's growth from a small startup in the mid 1980s to one of the driving forces behind the internet economy in the 1990s. It also talks about the events that led to Sun's decline in the early 2000s, and McNealy' failure to arrest this decline. The case concludes with a discussion of the leadership change at Sun and whether Schwartz was the right person to give the ailing company a new lease of life.

Questions:

1. Assuming that you were hired as a consultant to the Sun board of directors, describe what should be done with the Sun management team.  Make it clear whether the management team should be changed or whether economic and technological circumstances have caused the problems at Sun, meaning the current management team can still lead Sun to success.

INTRODUCTION

"Scott (McNealy) is kind of like Moses. (He) led the world to the land of milk and honey, but he got left behind."

- Paul Saffo, director, Institute for the Future,1 in 2004.2

"Sun has been a labor of love for me for since 1982 and it has been an honor and privilege to serve as its CEO for the past 22 years. We've helped shape the industry as it is today, and the opportunities before us are immense."2

- Scott McNealy, co-founder, chairman and former CEO of Sun Microsystems, in 2006.3

The End of an ERA

In April 2006, Scott McNealy (McNealy), the co-founder of Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun), announced that he would step down as the CEO of Sun in favor of the company's president and Chief Operating Officer (COO) Jonathan Schwartz (Schwartz). This was significant news for the IT industry, as McNealy had been at the helm of Sun for the last 22 years and had steered the company through a series of ups and downs in the industry.

The announcement was made on the same day that Sun announced a loss of $217 million4 for the quarter ended March 31st 2006, (taking the company's cumulative losses since 2002 to a staggering $4.5 billion).

It was not a surprise as Wall Street had been calling for McNealy's resignation since the early 2000s when Sun first went into decline following the bursting of the dotcom and telecom bubbles in 2000 and 2001 respectively. Between fiscal years 2001 and 20055, Sun saw its sales fall 39 percent and its share price plummet from a peak of $64 in mid 2002 to around $4 by 2005. Following the announcement of McNealy's exit, the stock gained 8.6 percent in extended trading and reached its highest level of the year at $5.41 (Refer Exhibit I for Sun's share prices).

McNealy said that the leadership change was a part of the company's succession planning efforts, and that he was looking forward to playing the role of 'chief evangelist' within Sun. However, some analysts felt that that the board had forced McNealy to step down under intense pressure from Wall Street over the company's poor financial performance.

McNealy was to continue as the chairman of Sun's board as well as chairman of the board of Sun Federal, Inc.6 McNealy was as well known in the IT industry for his visionary leadership of Sun in the 1980s and 1990s, as for his witty takes on competitors, especially Microsoft Corp. (Microsoft)...

He was one of the most controversial leaders in the industry, but even his harshest critics could not deny that he played a pivotal role in shaping the future of computing. It was not surprising therefore that when the leadership change at Sun was announced, analysts said it was 'the end of an era'in the history of the IT industry.

Background

McNealy was born on November 13, 1954 in Indiana. His father, William McNealy was vice chairman at American Motors Corp. (AMC).7 As a child, McNealy took an avid interest in the auto industry - an interest encouraged by his father, who often discussed business with the youngster and allowed him to accompany him when he went to play golf with people like Lee A. Iacocca.8

After attending Cranbrook Kingswood School, a preparatory school near Detroit, McNealy was accepted at Harvard University, from where he graduated with a degree in Economics in 1976. He then tried for a place at Stanford Graduate School of Business (Stanford) but was rejected.

While trying for an admission into Stanford, McNealy took up a job as foreman at the Rockwell International Corp. (Ohio), which made body panels for trucks. When he eventually got into Stanford in 1978, he chose to specialize in manufacturing rather than the more popular finance. He was not a dedicated student and later admitted that he spent more time 'goofing off' than in classes.

One of his classmates recalled that McNealy never bothered to attend any class that he did not think would help him get a job. At that point McNealy was not ambitious. Reportedly, his ambition was to start a small machine shop that he could leave to his children, and then, to retire early. After graduating in 1980, he worked in the manufacturing departments of FMC Corp. (which made tanks for the US army) and of minicomputer maker Onyx Systems. In 1982, Vinod Khosla (Khosla), McNealy's classmate at Stanford, asked him to join him, Andy Bechtolsheim (Bechtolsheim) and Bill Joy (Joy) in starting a computer manufacturing unit to make and sell workstations operating on UNIX.

The Golden Years

It was McNealy's dynamism and vision that were largely responsible for Sun's rapid growth in the first two decades of the company's existence. When McNealy first joined Sun, he was in charge of manufacturing, but later became responsible for sales as well. This helped him develop a good understanding of different areas of the business. After McNealy became CEO in 1984, he played an important role in shaping Sun's vision that 'The Network is the Computer'. Sun was committed to developing technologies that would allow computers to connect seamlessly over a network, thus increasing their power tremendously. Networking would allow computing to be provided like a utility, just like electricity and telecommunications..

The Decline

The beginning of the new millennium turned out to be inauspicious for the US economy. The collapse of several dotcom and telecom companies combined with the September 11 terrorist attacks on the US sent the economy into a decline, and one of the worst affected by these adversities was the IT industry...

Conclusion

According to analysts, Sun could have become one of the giants of the IT industry, on par with IBM and Microsoft. Many concepts that had become the standard in the early 2000s, like networking and open source, were first popularized by Sun. But the company took some missteps along the way, which did not allow it to take advantage of its resources. "They've (Sun) always had lots of great things on paper. But when it comes to execution, they're lacking. They always seem to be behind where they need to be" said Gary Feierstein, vice-president for information technology at Premier Inc., a hospital management company.

Case Study The Tale of Chromatic to Lucent

Instructions

Go to page 276 of your textbook From concept to Wall Street: A complete guide to entrepreneurship and venture capital and read the case study “The Sale of Chromatic to Lucent”.

In one paragraph, briefly summarize the case.

Then, discuss what you learned from the case.

What would you have done differently?

Case Study—The Sale of Chromatis to Lucent

In May 2000, Lucent Technologies announced it was acquiring an almost unknown private company, Chromatis, for approximately $5 billion in Lucent stock. An analysis of the foundation and sale of Chromatis sheds light on and provides a practical example of some of the issues reviewed in this book, with an emphasis on issues relating to the company’s sale.

Beginnings

Chromatis was founded in 1997 by Dr. Rafi Gidron and Orni Petrushka, two men who had cooperated before when they founded Scorpio Communications and sold it to U.S. Robotics for $72 million in cash in August 1996. Petrushka continued managing Scorpio under its new ownership, and Dr. Gidron worked at U.S. Robotics headquarters until it was bought out by 3Com.

Gidron and Petrushka say that after Scorpio was sold, they felt the need to experience again the sense of entrepreneurship involved in a startup. They started looking for a market in need of solutions which they were capable of offering. Gidron and Petruschka knew that after their successful experience with Scorpio, almost any initiative they would undertake would attract the keen interest of venture capital funds. Their success was not regarded as mere chance, due to their experience in corporate management and their solid theoretical background (Gidron, for instance, had been a Professor at Columbia University specializing in the area of communications).

The chosen target market was infrastructure for metropolitan communications networks (“metro”). The fundamental factors driving the market were the observations that while the volume of voice communications rises by 5–10% every year, data traffic was increasing exponentially. Consequently, without dramatically upgrading the efficiency of data communications transmissions, the existing metro infrastructure was not expected to be able to handle the data volume. A principal stimulus for the development of a market for products addressing the new congestion problem was the deregulation of the communications market in 1996, which opened the local calls market to competition. This change led to a massive wave of investments in infrastructure by existing companies, as well as by companies which wanted to enter the local markets. Obviously, the giant communications infrastructure companies such as Cisco, Lucent, Ciena, and Nortel, as well as younger companies such as Sycamore, were also interested in entering this market and capturing a significant share of it.

After concluding that communications companies were about to make massive capital investments in the metropolitan networking market, the entrepreneurs decided to examine it. First, they met with potential customers and studied their needs. This market-orientation approach, although the product was essentially technological, was different from the route Gidron and Petruschka had taken before when establishing Scorpio. This time, thorough market research was conducted before they started the development, in order to increase the likelihood of success.

Chromatis’ entrepreneurs aspired to develop a full networking solution which would optimize the capacity of optical fibers by increasing the volume of traffic transmitted through them. The system integrated hardware for multiplexing several different wavelengths (DWDM – Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing), technology for transmitting data using IP (Internet Protocol), technology for connecting telephone exchanges, and other technologies. The system was to be installed at the facilities of communications carriers, and the target market was metropolitan telephone companies. Thus was Chromatis born.

Building the Company

After deciding on their strategic direction, the entrepreneurs founded the company in 1997. The company was organized as a Delaware company with a development center in Israel, and its main offices were in Bethesda, Maryland (where several communications companies are centered and switching engineers are relatively abundant). The entrepreneurs used their own money for the initial capital. It was important to them that a leading U.S. fund participate in the first-stage financing round, which would expose them to customers and competitors in the target market. Therefore, they brought together the venture capital fund JVP (Jerusalem Venture Partners) and Crosspoint fund as their initial investors. JVP had previously invested in Scorpio, Gidron and Petruschka’s previous company, and since the entrepreneurs had had a good experience with the fund, and in particular its managing partners, Fred Margalit, they decided to allow the fund to act as the lead investor in the new company in the first round, which took place in March 1998, in which Chromatis raised $7 million. In October 1998, the company raised another $5 million, this round being led by Lucent Venture Partners. All of the previous investors also took part in the second round. In November 1999, when the company was finishing its beta testing and was ready to go to market, the company raised approximately $38 million from its previous investors, including Lucent’s venture capital fund, and from new investors, including the Soros and Hambrecht funds. This round was based on a company valuation of more than $100 million.

At first, Gidron and Petruschka acted as joint CEOs, but later recruited the outside CEO Bob Barron, who had approximately one year earlier declined a similar offer from Cerent, a company operating in a similar field which was later bought by Cisco for around $7 billion. Chromatis’ top management team also included some former Scorpio and U.S. Robotics employees.

All along the way, Chromatis recruited first-rate employees and managers. For example, it managed to recruit Mory Ejabat, one of the best known managers in the field of communications and the active CEO of the communications equipment company Ascend Communications, a company bought by Lucent one year earlier for more than $20 billion.

Before the sale, the company employed about 160 workers. In 1999, the company launched some beta trials with telecom companies, including Quest and Bell Atlantic, but had substantially no revenue.

The Transaction

In May 2000, Chromatis announced that it had been acquired by Lucent in a stock transaction based on a value of around $5 billion. Under the agreement, Lucent allotted 78 million of its shares to Chromatis, excluding the 7% stake of Lucent Venture Partners. Lucent allotted another 2.5 million of its shares to several key employees of Chromatis, contingent upon Chromatis meeting certain performance-based goals after the sale.

The deal left almost everyone involved in the industry dumbstruck. The company was founded less than two years before the sale and had no meaningful revenues or guaranteed contracts. Apparently, a successful combination of technology, management, and strategic alliances, particularly the one with Lucent, had a material impact on the mere fact of the company’s sale.

Analysis and Prologue

Confirmation that the optical networking industry had become a hot field in the capital market had already been given when Cisco bought Cerent, Chromatis’ competitor, in a $7 billion stock transaction in 1998. Without any comparable self-developed technology, it was only a matter of time before Lucent, one of Cisco’s most prominent competitors, would acquire a similar company. The area in which Chromatis operated appeared to be even hotter when Cisco announced that orders for Cerent’s product, which integrates data flow on fiber optic networks, had risen to approximately $2 billion per year.

As it appeared when the acquisition was announced, Chromatis’ price tag resulted not only from a comparison with the sale of Cerent to Cisco, but also from Lucent’s relative disadvantage in the metropolitan communications market in which Chromatis operated. Chromatis offered Lucent almost a complete solution for an existing and emerging need in the metropolitan communications market, a solution with which Lucent was familiar from a relatively early stage due to its investment in Chromatis through its venture capital fund. In other words, although Chromatis had an independent market (as its beta trials with telecom companies had proven) which enabled it to keep going as an independent company, Lucent always stood in the background as a potential buyer. Thus, the need to become acquainted with one another, a stage which is necessary in any merger negotiations, was obviated. From the perspective of real options, the introduction of Lucent’s venture capital fund to the company increased the likelihood that Lucent would acquire the company (as indeed was the case). In other words, introducing Lucent as an investor was tantamount to buying a partial put option. However, Chromatis paid no small premium for this option—stemming from the fact that Lucent’s competitors attributed a lower probability to their possibility of buying Chromatis. As discussed in the chapter on valuation, any decision on the creation of a binding and long-term relationship with a leading company in the field can entail a cost in the form of a reduced likelihood of relationships with competing companies.

Nevertheless, it is important to note that despite its relationship with Lucent, the company also attracted the interest of other companies that considered buying it, such as the communications equipment company Sycamore.

As was apparent all along, a major key to Chromatis’ success was recruiting leaders in every field. The two entrepreneurs understood that the product they were planning was needed in the market, understood how important it was to raise capital quickly, and how essential the money was, mainly to recruit the best people in the market in each field. The recruitment of such people, along with their superb product, enabled the company to demand and receive investments with the relatively high valuation of $100 million.

Lucent, on its part, had performed 33 acquisitions in the four years preceding its acquisition of Chromatis as part of its strategy of expanding into markets with faster growth rates than its traditional core business, and to complement lines of products it had had no time to develop independently in its laboratories. Starting from the point in which it entered the company as an investor, Lucent’s investment in Chromatis was clearly of interest to it for strategic reasons, namely, reinvigorating its leading position in the optical networking market. Chromatis was addressing the metropolitan networking market, which was particularly attractive to Lucent since this market lacked a dominant player such as Nortel was in the long haul networking market.

How can such a high acquisition price be explained when the annual value of the equipment market targeted by Chromatis was $2 billion (even when one takes into account projected sales of around $8 billion in 2004)? The explanation lies in the valuation of companies by strategic investors: From Lucent’s point of view, sales in Chromatis’ target market were expected to encourage sales of other equipment sold by the company. In addition, until that time, Lucent still depended on obtaining large contracts with, among other companies, AT&T, from which it was spun off. Therefore, expanding its spectrum of products in order to appeal also to smaller clients could help Lucent in broadening its product offering and the scopes of its contracts. In the acquisition of Chromatis, as well as in acquisitions in similar markets in which there are few major suppliers, the explanation for the price lies more in the acquirer’s strategic considerations than in the valuation of the target as an independent company. In addition, in stock transactions both the target and the acquirer take into account other considerations that could affect the value of the deal. For instance, the value of the acquirer’s stock, as well as the ability to sell the stock received in the transaction, could affect the value of the deal. A cash transaction is not equivalent to a stock transaction with the same announced value, as the plummeting of Lucent’s stock price in the coming year indicates.

In August 2001, Lucent had announced that it is shutting down the Chromatis division (originating from the acquisition of Chromatis). The potential clients for the products developed by Chromatis, the Competitive Local Exchange Carriers (CLECs), were themselves facing a dramatic reduction in sales with some of them collapsing into bankruptcy, and hence almost stopped acquiring new equipment. Lucent itself was facing a meltdown in most of its businesses, and was trying to reduce its own “burn-rate.” As part of its restructuring, which included the layoffs of over 50,000 employees and refocusing on existing products, Lucent gave up on Chromatis.

The closing of Chromatis only one year following its acquisition for $5 billion signifies the dramatic shakedown in the technology area in general, and the communication field in particular. This shakedown, which started in the later part of 2000, and which people felt was associated primarily with the “Internet bubble,” rapidly spread to most areas in technology. Again it was shown that the timing of investments, as well as of venture development and of exiting it, is by no means less important in determining the prospects of a venture, its entrepreneurs and its investors, than the actual strategy of the company, which includes an optimized composition of employees, technology, cost structure, “sweet spots” in target markets, innovative pricing models, and astute strategic alliances.