It's official - customers think Cisco gear is overpriced. Well, at least the majority of readers who voted in our informal poll, which you can find in last week's "Schools dump Cisco" story.
I don't think anyone should be surprised by the poll results - I think the pricing debate has been an issue with Cisco customers for some time. But as some readers point out in the comments to the story, Cisco has wide ranging support, a strong channel and a strong user community (just like our community of Cisco Subnet readers). But is that really justification for Cisco to charge, or for users to spend, a premium buying the Cisco brand?
Poll here.
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The Cisco Subnet blog is written by Network World managing editor Jim Duffy and is the official blog of Network World's Cisco Subnet community. The Cisco Subnet site is managed by Online Community Editor Julie Bort. Cisco Subnet is the independent voice of Cisco customers and is your gateway to daily Cisco news, blogs, opinion, books, prize giveaways and more. Visit the Cisco Subnet home page daily and while you are there, subscribe to the Cisco Alert e-mail newsletter, which includes news and views generated by the Cisco Subnet community as well as Cisco-related stories on Network World and elsewhere on the Web.
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what?
overpriced but worth it?
That would mean its not overpriced.
Severe price point misses on lower end
For VoIP deployments in all our Retail locations, we have been forced to leave Cisco for HP ProCurve. At this point in the evolution of networking, PoE should be embedded into every port in a switch and we should only be required to buy a power brick to activate it. Cisco's pricing differential for PoE enabled devices at lower end is really telling my company that "Cisco has no interest in serving that market segment."
My local Cisco account team says they are now losing to HP ProCurve for branch office VoIP but Corporate has no plans to introduce better prices or newer low cost switches to meet the threat.