Gary Jackson, vice-president for APAC at Force10 Networks, said the firm competes with Cisco in the core and edge switching environments.
“Yes we are gaining ground [on Cisco]. There is a growing recognition that there are highly reliable alternatives with very compelling total cost of ownership solutions that should at the very least be considered. And now that we have very substantial household name customers worldwide, and strong cluster computer, storage and software virtualisation partners and professional integrators, there is a growing acceptance of low-risk alternatives in the market that inevitably have some effect on market shares,” he said.
Jackson also questioned Cisco’s acquisitive approach and stated that Cisco has acquired numerous technologies, with many of them “dying on the vine”.
“Acquisitions have the advantage of obtaining ownership of new technologies faster than internal development, but brings with it the significant challenge of integration into the new owner both technical integration, and often far more significantly, “cultural” integration,” said Jackson. “It is a fact that many companies that are acquired wind up with a lot of very unhappy people, who are used to being part of a smaller, independent, fast-moving company, and overnight they become part of a large, less nimble company that has many more procedures and check points. As a result it is a regular pattern that 12 months later, much of the technical expertise of the acquired team leaves, and technical integration gets hard to impossible.”
Jackson said the Cisco of 10 years ago was more focused on its core business than the Cisco of today, and the amount and strategy of acquisitions is not always clear to its traditional customers.
Cisco’s channel ethos
Many analyst stats support Cisco’s position as the leading networking vendor, but how does the firm achieves the results? What really ignites the rivalry debate is discussions on Cisco’s approach to the channel.
When asked about Cisco channel reputation, Jackson branded it “not great”, in particularly for non-top tier Gold resellers.
“The big Gold [partners] do a large volume of business, so are accepting of the low margin business on the product side. However, it is a frustrating relationship for many, many others,” said Jackson. “We see this as part of our opportunity to grow our business, by showing value to the end-users, but equally important, by showing our predictability to the reseller community, thus enabling them to grow a profitable Force10 business with us.
“We do not take business direct and undermine our reseller partners. We always work with end-users on the benefits and focus of our products, but we also work with partners. Cisco partners are often not sure whether it will be direct or indirect,” he said. “We also do not have hundreds of partners, we have a much smaller number with whom we work. This makes the relationship strong, and also helps preserve partner margins. Partner margins with Cisco are very, very thin.”
Steve Dixon, managing director for A/NZ at Riverbed, who competes with Cisco in the WAN optimisation space, said: “Cisco has its WAAS product [for WAN optimisation], which is not reliable, does not scale and does not perform.
“We come up against Cisco all the time, but we win nine times out of 10. This annoys Cisco no end and John Chambers himself is trying to terminate us with extreme prejudice. It is a classic David and Goliath battle.”
Dixon added there are so many partners selling Cisco that it has become a commodity offering.
Nick Verykios, marketing director of Distribution Central, which stocks networking products from rivals such as Riverbed and Aruba, said rivals have only managed to ‘chip away’ at Cisco’s position in the traditional switch and router space.
“The exception is Juniper in the router space, who has indeed taken a good chunk of router share from Cisco. The exception in the switching space is HP, who seems to be doing well at the edge with ProCurve. However, this only holds true in enterprise and government verticals as the service provider space is dominated by many other players such as Alcatel-Lucent,” he said. “The emerging and advanced technology spaces such as security, collaborative communications, extreme network replacement, NAC, WAN optimisation, storage ‘version three’, wireless/mobility, see no Cisco dominance.”
Verykios said in many highly lucrative advanced networking opportunities, the trend “is clearly against Cisco”.
“Cisco rarely wins pure play technology bake-offs yet still manages to sell truckloads of whatever it wants to influence. It has kept competitors out of its premiere account base short term, selling to the customer that does not need to diversify and increase support burdens. But that’s naive and is starting to show,” said Verykios.
“Much of Cisco’s acquired technology isn’t incorporated into IOS as the systems are incompatible, and yet to be ‘assimilated’. There are also issues relating to compatibility and where they use the ‘all one company’ line to make it look like support could be reduced, there are in fact still products from many different companies, thereby increasing support burdens. The clever marketing and brute force approach is being offset by competitors who are actually building a more integrated and enhanced technology set under a single OS. That’s a big reason why Cisco is not dominating in the emerging and advanced technology space. As an example, its wireless and WAN optimisation acquisitions have been a bit of a joke.”
Courting the Cisco crown
By
Trevor Treharne
on Jun 24, 2008 3:26PM

Page 3 of 4 | Single page
Got a news tip for our journalists? Share it with us anonymously here.
Partner Content

Build cybersecurity capability with award winning Fortinet training from Ingram Micro

Channel can help lead customers to boosting workplace wellbeing with professional headsets

Tech For Good program gives purpose and strong business outcomes

How NinjaOne Is Supporting The Channel As It Builds An Innovative Global Partner Program

Kaseya Dattocon APAC 2024 is Back
Sponsored Whitepapers
-1.jpg&w=100&c=1&s=0)
Stop Fraud Before It Starts: A Must-Read Guide for Safer Customer Communications

The Cybersecurity Playbook for Partners in Asia Pacific and Japan

Pulseway Essential Eight Framework

7 Best Practices For Implementing Human Risk Management

2025 State of Machine Identity Security Report