Nortel, which rarely shies away from poking fun at Cisco has launched an aggressive campaign targeted at 
Cisco customers and what Nortel describes as the $6.1 billion "Cisco Energy Tax" that customers are paying.
Nortel says it has calculated that Cisco customers around the world have spent $6.1 billion more on energy expenses. Nortel says it came to that figure by taking the installed data/voice networks numbers from analyst firm Dell’Oro Group and crunched them through the Nortel Energy Efficiency Calculator. According to Nortel: "Over the five-year period from ‘04-’07 and pro-rated YTD 2008, businesses have paid $6.1 billion more in energy costs to power and cool Cisco networks than they would have had they used a comparable Nortel configuration."
The campaign includes the release of two TV commercials running on CNN that's part of a larger social media drive, says Nortel. Writing in Nortel's blog, Bo Gowan claims that the campaign has led to a "four-fold increase in organic leads and a 42% increase in sales funnel." The company also points to recent wins with the New York Mets and the 2012 Olympics in London. However, Nortel does not specify whether it has ousted Cisco in key Cisco accounts because of the 'tax'.
A Cisco spokesperson said as per company policy, Cisco doesn't comment on competitors, but adds:
"Cisco’s switching market share reflects the market’s preference for Cisco as the only networking provider that can truly deliver end-to-end solutions that meet critical business needs and make the network a strategic asset. We remain confident that we'll continue to lead in LAN switching through continued development and design of innovative new products and solutions.
"Note: You can contact third-party research firm Dell Oro for Cisco's LAN switching market share by calling 650.622.9400.
"Furthermore, Cisco believes there’s a strong need for an industry standard around 'green' that is an apples-to-apples comparison and most importantly is a measure of what customers are actually asking for in evaluation of power consumption in LAN switching. To that end, Cisco’s leading discussions within a number of international standards organizations including the ITU, METI, ATIS and the Green Grid on the development of industry standards that take into account entire network system capabilities and efficiency versus looking at individual product data sheets.
"Cisco hopes these organizations will adopt standards that reward good environmental practices, encourage improvements in design from generation to generation, and provide apples-to-apples comparisons for our customers. We believe this approach, instead of marketing hype, is the best for our customers and for the industry as a whole."
As a Cisco customer, do you believe this 'tax' real?
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Likely misleading
First off I will tell you that I'm with Mitel and we compete against both Nortel and Cisco in the telecommunication/UC space but in that context, I have looked quite closely at the power consumption of telephony products as we spend a fair bit of effort on optimization in this area.
I can't speak to the data products but for the telephony products it would seem that Nortel is pitting their best case numbers against what appears to be Cisco's worst case numbers. In fact some of the numbers they claim for Cisco don't appear sensible.
It is interesting to note that one of Nortel's latest phone series (11xx which adds backlighting) has actually increased their power consumption substantially over their older 2000 series phones. The old 2000 series phones were quite good and only slightly higher in consumption than Mitel's phones. But based on published data by Nortel, it would appear the 1100 series uses more power than Cisco's typically deployed equivalent phones!
If I turn to the common equipment side for telephony, the Cisco power consumption estimate looks reasonable (arguably slightly low) and the Nortel number looks about right. However, what is clear is that in both cases the common equipment adds a significant tax per phone when more efficient alternatives exist. I ran a sample on 1000 users in their calculator and it added about 3/4 of a Watt per phone for Nortel and about 1 Watt for Cisco.
So in conclusion I agree with Cisco that an apples to apples comparison is needed so people know the truth and are not mislead and green-washed. Cisco's telephony power consumption isn't wonderful but it is disingenuous of Nortel to suggest that their telephony is significantly better in the general case.
Christian Szpilfogel
Office of the CTO, Mitel
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