Does Huawei have the most potential to eat Cisco's lunch?

i agree with you that Huawei sell network gears more than cisco.i am from iran and regarding to the US sanctions , OFAC and... , we can't buy cisco products.so iranian telecom and too many other ISP and network provider push poor performance/features Huawei to customers.there is nobody in iran that prefer Huawei over cisco , but when you can't buy cisco gears and if you can , you don't have even IOS patch/upgrade TAC support , there is no choise.other restrictions like exporting products with crypto support(IPSEC VPN / SSL / SSH ) is the other problem for country that is not in sanctions , but becuase cisco should follow up us goverments policy , these are cumbersume to buy cisco products that support even DES.who will trust telent for device mangment even if you manage them on OOB network.from other hand you buy crappy Huawei that is fully loaded with SSH/SSL/IPSEC (even AES-256) without any additional license or restrictions.something else : why us gov still make export restriction for device/image with crypto support ? why you can run linux box with full crypto support (OPENSSL/OPENSSH/OPENSWAN ,...) that most of them can be downloaded from repositories even is US (like Centos) but if you want to have SSH support on IOS/Frameware , you are sucked ? this policy only make more rooms for crappy company like Huawei that don't offer anything more than putting linux on low end hardware (i prefer using DD-WRT over ugly Huawei and Huawei like vendor).

Dear Brad,
one of the other reason (beside US Sanctions) that most biggest organizations in Iran buy from Chinese company like Huawei is there are too many debate in Iran focused about the possibility of high-tech US company (included cisco) may put backdoor in their products and that it is a real threat to our national security. for that reason they buy cheep products form chinese tech.as a INFOSEC i believed that threat (distribution attack) is more notable from Chinese tech , while there have black history on that issues. I prefer to using tech from company that is more mature , stable and give me more standard features. Sadly most network infrastructure in Iranian telecommunication run by Huawei . how can I be sure that they are not eavesdropping ? From the security perspective I prefer cisco over Huawei (even with the mentioned risks) . I can find easly cisco security center page/portal that show all vulnerability , workaround and … whatever about my cisco gears.did you know that Huawei have such service ? how you informed about your ugly Huawei DSL router have vulnerability that allow remote attacker access your network ? Nobody .maybe Chinese People's Liberation Army know about that.nobody don’t forget the cribber spying on too many embassy around the world that drived by Chinese governments.

thank

I just left Cisco after about a decade of working there, and I can tell you that the idiotic 'council' structure has contributed mightily to the increasing fragmentation and over-decentralization of an already-fragmented, overly-decentralized 'company'.

We've all heard the jokes about products designed by commitees - well, that's how all Cisco products are designed, these days. And these councils are used by upper management to disclaim responsibility for failures and problems; executives will tout successes which they had no role in bringing about, but can use the existence of the councils to absolve themselves of all blame for the problems and failures for which they are most assuredly responsible.

There's a feeling inside Cisco that most of the 'adults' have left, and that the company has strayed very, very far from its roots in product and technology engineering excellence into the realm of MBAed marketeers. Ned Hooper's idiotic acquisition of Flip for a cool half billion, and the laughable cloud computing 'strategy' just announced ('Universal Service Delivery') which consists of sticking a CRS-1 in front of a Nexus 7000, with some servers behind that, are two prime examples.

I'm glad to be out - it was just heartbreaking to watch the degeneration of this once-proud company, the exemplar of all that was good about the Silicon Valley, into a disorganized mess of executive profiteering and engineering via press release. Hopefully, the downturn will shake things out and Cisco will regain its bearings, at some point, but it's not likely as long as John Chambers remains as a totally Wall Street-focused, otherwise-disengaged CEO.

I have worked in the past for one of Cisco wholesale partners, and would have to say, that the only guy that makes any money out of selling a fair sized Cisco transaction... is the Cisco AM...

I have given up on the Cisco channel a while back, and have moved onto selling profitable networking solutions of other flavor's... The partner program today...is what it is... To cry about how it may, or may not treat you, is to fail to look at the other considerable opportunities in the industry today...?

I agree with aspects of the last post and personally think that the Cisco monster needs to break itself up into separate companies, to regain the dynamic's of less management and marketing bloat... More along the dynamics of what Richard Branson and the Virgin Group have archived....

On the flip side... Does Huawei have a channel...? That even looks slightly similar to what Cisco has constructed...??? Would you trust them in a business deal that you need to partner with someone...?

This week you are pointing out that an offshore, non US based, non US tax creating company, that has none of the baggage of the regulations of a US listed company, is the brand that is going to do the damage. I'm not sure, but this kind of sounds like cheerleading....?
....and last week you are complaining that Cisco is moving development of key IP and engineering jobs offshore in an effort to make more money, and cut US engineering jobs... (remember, from afar, the US Auto industry looks like the shining example of what all modern industries should not be...so get a grip, if it can be done cheaper elsewhere, it probably will be...that's called business..)

So...is there a chance that a component of why Cisco is expanding offshore... is to remain competitive ...? ..from the threat of companies like Huawei...?

Brad, I care little for Cisco, but could you consider a bit more objectivity...?

Thanks for a great article! I have not laughed so much about a geek topic in quite a few years. What saddens me the most about the general topic is the wide open failure to enforce anti-trust laws allowing the big royal monopoly folks to gobble up competition and thus make the USA less and less a player in the markets we invented, we being the taxpayers. A great deal of the underlying patents were paid for by us, as in the case of the Integrated Circuit attributed to TI or Intel when the work was done in secret by/for the Air Force and others.