I think it is disturbing that cisco have acquired such dominance that some companies don't appear to be interested in investigating the market. As you say in your article "over the years many competitors have had better technology than Cisco".

HP have certainly done a great job at keeping their second place position a secret - I certainly was not aware despite being a recent customer.

Don't give up on Nortel though, certainly like HP they are very quiet about their offering, but I have just attended their Enterprise Technology Forum and I think they are beginning to "get it". As for their product I urge anyone to look seriously at their Split Multi Link Trunking technology as it is the best resilience story I have seen. All they need now is cisco's department of spin.