Courting the Cisco crown

Jin at IDC said the acquisition approach works very well for Cisco. “The acquisitions make it easier for Cisco to branch out into new profitable areas and to be a leading vendor in those areas. This is not an easy thing to do. Cisco is one of only a handful of companies that can acquire and capitalise on that acquisition in a short time frame.”

Molony at Ovum said: “Cisco has the ability to absorb new companies quickly and turn them into another profitable part of the Cisco money-making machine. This does not seem to be diminished as it has gone from small buys to the bigger deals.

“Cisco is still making small deals along the way just as it used to – that program hasn’t altered. Typically they buy one company a month. Cisco also doesn’t buy outside the US historically – will that change? It has ambitious plans for emerging markets so may need more,” added Molony.

Rival pitch

As the networking space has diversified, it has seen Cisco find new opportunities alongside fresh rivals. If Cisco is the leader in the enterprise networking space, then according to research house Dell’Oro Group, HP’s ProCurve networking division is second globally.

According to Dell’Oro, HP ProCurve experienced year-over-year port growth for the first calendar quarter of 2008 at nearly four times the growth rate of the networking industry.

“ProCurve has experienced strong growth in both Australia and New Zealand over the last three years,” said Gurkirat Singh, country manager South Pacific at HP ProCurve. “Our networking solutions are based on open standards, and offer businesses real flexibility and choice. In the current economic climate, many businesses in Australia and New Zealand are looking for ways to reduce costs. ProCurve’s product reliability and warranty have helped reduce network running costs for many of our clients.”

Mark Thompson, global director of sales and marketing at HP ProCurve, said: “This growth reflects a dramatic increase in the number of customers who are reconsidering their alternatives and looking to ProCurve for flexibility to quickly meet the changing needs of users, applications and organisations.”

Grant Howe, country manager for A/NZ at 3Com, said: “3Com and Cisco compete across a number of networking solutions. There is no one particular area that stands out. Whilst we can’t comment on Cisco’s market share we do know that 3Com is performing well in the Unified Communications segment. We are sure that we will continue to gain ground in this growing market – covering requirements of organisations of different sizes and needs.”

Dominic Torre, managing director of D-Link A/NZ, said: “Specifically in the ANZ region, D-Link competes with Cisco in the lower end enterprise and higher end of SMB networking markets.

“From a product perspective, the competition from Cisco has traditionally been switching, however more recently commercial-grade wireless, and to a lesser degree security/firewalls and various other network security solutions.”

Torre said rivals have gained ground on Cisco at the enterprise end in terms of revenue, but the market has not witnessed a dramatic increase in ground from a single vendor.

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