Last week I received a post on an old blog, please see below.
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Submitted by Tito M. (not verified) on Tue, 08/26/2008 - 1:53pm.
Larry,
I still have not seen this new Cisco Wide Area Application Engine (WAE) 674 and Cisco WAAS v4.1
that won Best of Interop at any customers sites or being sold. I ask my Cisco AM and he said its available if I wanted it but was trying to get me to not call the bluff. This was suppose to be the new end all against Riverbed at Interop, but seems Cisco was just all smoke and mirrors.
Do you have news on it? Have you tested it yet against Riverbed? I have not seen any posts on it since Interop, where are all of our Cisco lovers? They at home drinking the Kool-Aid? Could this product just be a flop and Cisco is laying low?
Tito
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This made me wonder, what did happen with this best of Interop Winner that was suppose to beat all including the marketing leader Riverbed? So I called my distributer and they have none in stock, have never seen one as of yet. They told me it is a direct order from Cisco now and it has a lead time of three weeks. Wow, a three week lead time for this piece of gear that was to be the best thing since sliced bread and beat all other vendors.
It is time for me to ask our community, has anyone purchased this product from Cisco? Do you have any results or have you tested it against Riverbed or Juniper?
My question to Cisco would be where is the product? Where are the test comparisons to other vendors? Where are your customer success stories with this new product?
On the other hand while Cisco is looking for its lost product Riverbed has come out with the new evolution of the Steelhead product and promises more down the road. But Riverbed needs to remember that the product does need to evolve more down the road into different verticals. The reason is that you can only sell so many steelheads to customers; once 75% market penetration is done problems will happen.
I think these are all good questions and Tito deserves an answer.
Larry Chaffin Ph.D is the CEO/Chairman and founder of Pluto Networks, a consulting and VAR partner specializing in WDS, VoIP, WLAN, Telepresence and Security. Pluto Networks is a leader in WDS-Application Acceleration, Full Disk Encryption, End Point Security and Telepresence. While specializing in the needs of large and enterprise companies, Pluto Networks has been concentrating on the SMB customers to provide them with the same great service as larger companies. Pluto Networks holds SMB specializations from our partners to service all their needs. Pluto Networks has become a leader in SMB VOIP using Cisco and Linksys to service customers.
Managing Cisco Secure Networks, Skype Me, Practical VOIP Security, Configuring Check Point NGX VPN-1/Firewall-1, Configuring Juniper Networks NetScreen & SSG Firewalls, Essential Computer Security: Everyone's Guide to Email, Internet, and Wireless Security, How to Cheat at Microsoft Vista Administration, Microsoft Vista for IT Security Professionals, Asterisk Hacking, 2008 VoIP and Video Conferencing, Infosecurity 2008 Threat Analysis and author of Building a VOIP Network with Nortel's MS5100, along with co-authoring/ghost writing eleven other technology books for VIOP, WLAN, security and optical technologies. Larry is currently working on a follow up to Building a VoIP network with Nortel's MCS 5100 Book as well as new books on Cisco Telepresence Networks, Practical VoIP case studies and WAN Acceleration with Riverbed.
Larry has more than 29 vendor certifications and has been working on many others. Larry has been a principal architect around the world in 22 countries for many Fortune 100 companies designing VoIP, security, wireless and optical networks. He has expanded over time also to include application acceleration or WDS. Larry is working with major vendors now on updating current certification tests to make them real world focused.
The opinions expressed in this Weblog are those of the writer and may not represent the opinions of Network World.
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Can we get a head to head test Larry?
Larry, can we get a head to head test of both products? I am looking at a solution for my company who has 7 branch offices. My friends tell me you never get fired for buying Cisco, but I told them you will get fired if it does not work. I will send you my contact info off line and would be happy to be a test bed for both products.
Thanks for all of your work, Cisco might hate you even though you are a partner but we like you.
where is cisco?
Cisco has not posted one reply to this as of yet, seems funny. Normally you would see them posting all over the place calling the blogger an idiot and that the product is great.
I don't see that with this product, maybe there is a problem?
Thanks you for the input.
I wanted to thank our posters for the input, I have sent a email to Cisco asking whats going on. But as of yet I have not recieved a email back.
Tonight’s Top 10 List, why Cisco is not responding to this blog.
The Networkworld Tonight Show Top 10 List
Tonight’s Top 10 List, why Cisco is not responding to this blog.
Number 10 - Chambers told his staff that cannot use anonymous post anymore when responding to internet blogs (like that will ever happen)
Number 9 - The Musion's holographic projection system that Chambers used once just is not going to save the Cisco Wide Area Application Engine (WAE) 674 and Cisco WAAS v4.1 appliance with the customers.
Number 8 - Cisco is too busy researching a way to buyout Riverbed to save the WAAS product line.
Number 7- They are having a network outage?
Number 6 – The email asking for someone to respond has been passed from group to group with each group saying, that’s not something out groups takes care of please follow up with this group.
Number 5 – They had to open a TAC ticket?
Number 4 – They are having a hard time getting the Cisco Wide Area Application Engine (WAE) 674 and Cisco WAAS v4.1 appliance away from chamber in his home office, he said it is a really good foot rest when using his Telepresence System.
Number 3 – They gave away too many free Cisco Wide Area Application Engine (WAE) 674 and Cisco WAAS v4.1 appliances to customer to get them to use them and now have none left?
Number 2 – Could it be that they still cannot beat Riverbed or Juniper and are working on a cool marketing spin?
And the Number 1 reason why Cisco is not responding to this blog,
The old Jedi Mind Trick that you used on the judges at Interop just isn’t working on Cisco Subnet.
(in the background cheers, applause , cheers, clapping)
That is way to funny, but where is Doug Gourlay from Cisco?
Maybe it is time to start calling people out from Cisco to get some answers? So Doug Gourlay, where are you? Having a hard time getting that footrest away from Chambers?
Here's the short answer
Folks -- Cisco has not responded to date because we don't believe in replying to Larry et al's Riverbed-paid blog posts. No value to us or our customers.
That said, and given all the chatter here, here's the quick answer: the WAE-674 has been shipping since May 2008, with many production deployments. And software v4.1 was released in August, and is available to all WAAS buyers, as well as installed base users with a support agreement.
Re: joining a head-to-head bake-off test managed by any of the Riverbed-incented bloggers here -- that's not in the interest of Cisco, our customers, or partners. You can reference the Network World and Network Computing *independent* lab testing for reference (even if used older versions of code). Or the recent Olympics deployment.
Questions answered, no surprises here. Signing off this blog thread...
A very poor response from Cisco
A very poor response was the answer my CAM gave me when I called him this morning about this posting. He even said that he really doubts that Larry is paid to blog good comments about Riverbed. We both know Larry very well and can say it is not true; he has posted some very nice notes about Cisco also so would that mean Cisco is paying him? With other bloggers posting nice notes about Cisco is Cisco paying all of them? So back to what my CAM said a bad poor response and bad choice of word from a Cisco employee.
But let’s look at how long it took Cisco to GA the 4.1 software? It has been a long time and the reason is that Cisco had it in customer testing and it has not been working so well. It is still no great improvement over past software but they had to release it. The testing results I have seen would leave me to believe it still will not beat Riverbed, it might not beat Juniper.
With Cisco making this claim of people being paid by vendors for post this will open a Pandora ’s Box with in blogging here, I wonder how many people get paid by Cisco for all of the posts we see on Networkworld? It would be sad day if this was the case, so let’s just apologize Mark and leave it at that. One last thing, it was a poster who asked about your product in a post. Larry just posted a response asking for an answer for the poster.
PS, That reference you put in your post saying go to Network Computing to see how great the WAAS is? Please, they did not test Riverbed . I wonder if Cisco paid for this testing as they paid for the Miercom testing?
Here is a short reply Mark,
First I have no idea who you are Mark, I had to call someone at Cisco to find out.
Second I wish Riverbed paid me as much as Cisco does to create good blogs and posts.
Third, maybe you need to stay in marketing because I am sure Douglas would have not made such an outlandish remark about pays offs.
If I was you I would be very embarrassed as a Cisco employee to make such a claim. I get paid by no one to blog or post.
A paid blogger?
I think you are a little off base with saying someone is getting paid, but that leads me to my question first question. How much does Cisco spend in a year to have people post blogs for them? Does this cum under your marketing group or another group?
Who can I call at Cisco to get on this list of paid bloggers for Cisco?
Being the Footrest
hahaha, I love it! I do wish I had that level of access to our CEO, I aim a little higher than footrest though- (groans, jeers, and general oh gosh he just said that coming from the peanut gallery).
I spent the last two weeks with our sales teams at our Global Sales Meeting so didn't really have a lot of time to catch up on the message boards - guess I should set up a Google Alert for my own name or something so I know when to jump in and respond.
The funny thing was WAAS was my fastest growing product category last year- well over 100% Y/Y growth rates with a nice trajectory to north of $300M this year. Am not looking at buying Riverbed - not sure why I would candidly. I mean granted they are a deal at $1.15B today, down from over $50 a share to $15.xx and it would be a good footprint play, market share play, and I think most importantly getting more sales folks focused on this market opportunity is always a good thing. But for the technology alone? Nah, will pass with no hindsight regrets.
As far as why did our dates slip can I just shrug it away and say, because dates NEVER come in? Nothing ever ships early. And in all seriousness, and sarcasm aside we were focusing on simplification and usability in this release - we had a lot of room to improve and the beta users made good suggestions that were worthy, and these impacted dates. It's a hard choice sometimes - hit the date or hit the spec and sometimes the target moves. ce la vie.
If anyone, yes even you Larry, want to fire away a few rounds for making this call feel free- my email is, as always, I appreciate the feedback, it certainly spices my day up and is far better than trying to pry a footrest away from a CEO who never puts is feet up, keeps a schedule that would put a sherpa to shame, and is still genuinely a darn good guy.)
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