A look back at Cisco in 2008; What to expect from Cisco in 2009

We at Cisco Subnet have watched and commented on Cisco tirelessly this year and we're looking forward to another year of Cisco-watching. Let's recap on the highlights of the year and take a look ahead to what to expect from the networking giant in 2009. We'll recap on how it did in the security and data center sectors, and discuss its ambitions in the consumer space. We'll also take a look at the state of the CCIE market.

CISCO AND SECURITY: MUST TRY HARDER BUT A GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY LIES AHEAD
Most pundits recognize that Cisco has significant marketshare in security, but a recent Gartner report on the enterprise network firewalls space indicates that Cisco is rarely considered by companies researching security tools unless they are already Cisco customers. In addition, Cisco MARS, which was praised by some pundits last year has either fallen out of favor among Cisco's own sales reps or they are talked up too much by some Cisco reps and the product fails to live up to customers' expectations.

However, Cisco's standalone security appliances fared quite well against its rivals' equipment in NSS Labs tests, which included simulation of perimeter, internal network and e-commerce.

Cisco has a good chance to shine brighter in the enterprise security stakes as customers are looking to have a strategic vendor in security, and Cisco was the first choice -- the second being Microsoft, according to Nemertes Research, as reported in Ellen Messmer's analysis of Cisco's security profile. Best-of-breed is old hat, apparently. However, some observers don't believe Cisco is integrated enough. Customers are stuck managing the security functions from different consoles anyway even if it's inside the switch or router, notes Richard Stiennon, analyst with consultancy IT-Harvest is cited as saying in the analysis.

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