Has Cisco gone too far?

If we really want to have a discussion about ethics lets first ask Riverbed why their optimization reports DO NOT INCLUDE PACKET HEADER DATA.

Riverbed is scamming their customers with false advertising of exaggerated optimization claims.

i think just the fact that cisco paid mierkom for the report shows who is desperate. 7000 + riverbed customers and growin cant be wrong -:) ... i am not sure what cisco is these days - a switch company, a security company, a wan optimization company, a cable box company or it seems to more like a marketing company -:) what a joke.

I think we should talk about the list price of the product and as soon as you buy it from a partner you get 44% off and more. My friends company was told by Cisco it would be more like 53% to 60% off list if they purchased the product.

How can you take that much off the product and make money if you are Cisco? Is the product that bad and cheap that they have to take the much off? I know the typical discount off list for customer is 40% off, that on about all products so are all of the product made cheap overseas?

When Riverbed came to my friends office and said they don't give that much discount off the product the said it was a better product, would produce a better ROI and they are in the business of making money for the company. How can you do that if you are going to give the product away at 50% off just to sell it and say you have market share?

There was also mention of if you upgrade your core router and your company router with switches we would just give you the WAAS. That would just be working the numbers so it looks like the WAAS was free.

I know of a local company in my area that went with Cisco due to the fact that the staff are former Cisco employees and they would never put anything else in the network. These are the people that cause a CFO to lose money and get fat off Cisco steak dinners.

It is sad that this company did not give a far shake or evaluation to the products in testing, I was told they just said they tested it but had made the decision at dinner with Cisco before the evaluation even starter. I know of 5 large companies who have removed Cisco WAAS after putting it in for a year due to problems and it did not work like said. They all went with Riverbed, I have never heard of a Riverbed Customer removing the product and putting in Cisco WWAS.

It is said you never will get fired for buying a Cisco product or putting it in the network. So I guess no one will ever get fired for buying a Cisco WAAS, but maybe they should!!

This was a great picture from another post about Cisco. 

http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/44997

The following quote is attributed to John Chambers, but I wonder...does Mr. Chambers really have control of his company???

"Discussions of corporate ethics and integrity have become increasingly important in today's business environment, but these discussions are not new to Cisco. Ethics, especially integrity, have always been a significant part of both our culture and the way we conduct business. Operating with a strong sense of integrity is critical to maintaining trust and credibility with our customers, partners, employees, and shareholders."

John Chambers
Chairman and CEO
Cisco

URL:  https://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac227/about_cisco_ethics.html

So what does this say about the testing Cisco has done by other company's? 

If you want an independent view of the WAN optimisation/acceleration market look at Gartner. They have consistently warned prospective customers to beware of using Cisco WAAS. I don't often see that from Gartner.

They state that you would have to have a very compelling reason not to go with other vendors.

Riverbed's best PR is the Cisco WAAS.

We have tried to use the Cisco WAAS over the years and put it back in the box because it didn't deliver. Perhaps it has changed since then but I certainly have no issue with the Steelhead we put in. Worked first time with excellent results.

There is a danger any time a research company is paid by any organization - hardware vendor, software vendor, etc - to write a whitepaper or report for public consumption.

Let's face it, if you are paid by a customer to produce a marketing document you are not going to produce a document that is negative towards your customer. This is the same for EVERY report from EVERY vendor.

The test conditions - if a test takes place - are going to be optimized for the customer's product in question thus leading it to succeed.

Most IT managers are smart enough to take any marketing docs they receive from a vendor with the proverbial grain of salt.

Cisco, ethical??? They talk it but they dont walk it.
Anyone believing in their code of 'ethics' must be delusional.
They are a huge company that needs to make money to keep its stock price up.

I find it more than a little unconscionable that Mr. Chaffin attacks Miercom’s credibility when he fails to admit that he is a reseller of Riverbed equipment for application acceleration devices.

My contacts at Miercom inform me they did not state that the Riverbed device is incapable of supporting upward of 25,000 concurrent connections. However, under certain load conditions the product can crash before it reaches even 3,000 concurrent connections. Furthermore, to be as fair as possible to all parties, Miercom invites companies whose products have been featured in its competitive testing to be retested within 60 days of publication of results; this invitation was duly extended to Riverbed. Additionally, Riverbed has admitted to the deficiency referenced in the published report. I discovered this is true based on Riverbed’s own rebuttal document on page 2, where they indicate that they found and fixed this bug in RiOS 5.5.5.

From my conversation I gather that Miercom stands firmly by the results of their testing and invites Riverbed customers to contact the company directly for further information regarding these.

netguardianangel2@yahoo.com