Gartner tells us all what we already knew about the Cisco WAAS, software quality and stability issues should make customers wary

Gartner tells us all what we already knew about the Cisco WAAS, it is immature.

A recent post on my blog asking me for comments on the latest Gartner Publication about the Cisco WAAS, prompted this posting.  The title of the Gartner article was Cisco WAAS Update: Client Feedback Suggests to Proceed With Caution and the date was September 17, 2008. A summary of the article says a few things that we most of us who see past the Cisco Marketing spin knew already, the WAAS has issues. Please remember before all of the bashers jump on the blogger, this is from Gartner and customers not me. I have my own comments at the bottom.

Gartner put this paper together after getting feedback from Cisco WWAS customers, so this is not a competitive company saying these items below. Gartner said problems with software quality and stability issues should make customers wary and that the product is still immature when compared with its competitors, and successful deployments can be difficult to predict.  They reported that customer are having issues with the Cisco WAAS and that is does not meet the Cisco standards and it has taken some accounts six months or more to resolve significant bugs.

Gartner said they have spoken with many customers both large and small that continue to have serious problems with the software of the WAAS. They went on to say that this poses a serious question with regards to the quality and reliability of the software.  They said technical issues that customer have reported such as the product stability is an issue, some large scale customer work well but other even smaller ones don't work well. Even with new releases of the software the problems have got worse.

They spoke of the deployment problems that customers have with the install of the WAAS in data centers and that due to the complex nature of the WAAS install it has Asymmetrical routes issues. They also talked about the problems the WAAS has with CIFS and how it drops the connections.  But the biggest one that I can see is the problem that the WAAS has with WCCP. Now you can use the WAAS with WCCP and for Gartner to tell everyone that is has issues doing so because it only works with a certain number of WCCP releases is huge. Customers find out during the install when they call Cisco but how can you have this issues?

One note that was worth reading in this paper was that they know of customer who have abandoned the deployment of the product or are about to and also that some are removing it from the network. Others who listened to the Cisco Marketing spin and purchased the product are now stopping deployment and are stuck in a rut because they have no more budgets to purchase another product that will work.

Now there was much more than what I have written above and it all says the same thing, the WAAS has issues and it is very hard to deploy and install. Now Cisco did come out with a rebuttal to the Gartner paper and I have to say, it is pretty bad. Some of the things they say within the rebuttal are just wrong. These are some quotes from the Cisco rebuttal,

This "biased and small sample" does not accurately represent the broader Cisco WAAS customer base or actual Cisco WAAS quality metrics - and thus cannot lead to optimal product recommendations.

The report comments are not echoed in comments made by other analysts

Cisco fixed this issue in Cisco WAAS v4.0.7, which was released in early 2007 through the CIFS server auto-discovery feature.

Customers should ask why Gartner has presented these challenges and issues only to Cisco WAAS, without referencing these challenges across the industry or other vendors.

But this one is the best:

The report incorrectly represents Wan Optimization Controller (WOC) challenges by highlighting certain challenges that are applicable to Cisco WAAS, while failing to mention that the same complexity and challenges exist for all WOC vendors' solutions.

Cisco not all vendors have issues with installs and they don't take hours to install one appliance.

Now I really have to hit that BS button on my desk to Cisco on a few comments they put into this rebuttal, they are below.  

Gartner Claims                                                                     Cisco Response

Cisco is the only vendor who validates interoperability with a broad range of routers and switches? Please give me a break, I know three other vendors that do this all day and every day with different software loads and news ones each time they come out.

Cisco is the only vendor who supports WCCP and in-line with full path transparency? Who wrote this from Cisco? This is just Cisco marketing spin and is very wrong, I can say I have installed another vendor in-path and using WCCP in the same customer at two different sites and it was fully transparent. If Cisco really think people are going to drink this Kool Aid they need to think again.

Cisco competitors have limited supports for WCCP and network transparency? I think the Kool Aid must be that fruit punch flavor because this is just wrong for Cisco to say this.

I am very sure that Cisco is going to respond to this blog, but these are the same issues we hear from people all the time so there is really nothing new other than Gartner wrote about them. From a writer and blogger I would ask Cisco again, when are we going to see a head to head test?  I would still offer to find one company, test the vendors in the customer's network and go with the results.  But we could always start planning to do this at Interop?

One person wrote to me, is Cisco going to take advice and scrap the product and put money into UC? Another wrote maybe with the down turn in the market they will just buy Riverbed; they buy everyone else when they cannot beat them why not Riverbed?