Remember the good old days in LAN switching, when Cabletron used to bash Cisco at every turn while Cisco ate its, and every other competitors', lunch? Cabletron used to run an ad campaign showing a Catalyst switch being forced into a soda bottle to criticize the product's oversubscription; and also referred to Cisco routing blades in Cabletron switches as 'power sucking aliens.'
We all know where that got them.
What's left of Cabletron is Enterasys Networks, and while they've dampened the trash talk, they haven't left the arena. This week Enterasys revamped its high-end switching line with the new S-series, optimized for newer enterprise applications -- server virtualization, cloud computing, and video and voice convergence.
The S-series also includes plenty of the role- and policy-based security and access control goodies Enterasys is noted for. And at 160Gbps per slot, the line is plenty ready for upcoming 40/100G Ethernet requirements, expected early next year.
It requires a forklift upgrade of the old N-series chassis, however. And it remains to be seen if it will lift Enterasys' fortunes in Ethernet switching which have been flat at about 1.2% revenue share of the $19 billion market for the past several quarters.
But it's good to see them still in the game, even if it does conjure up amusing but uncomplimentary memories of the frat house-like atmosphere at Phi Gamma Cabletron in the mid-1990s.
Time for a kegger!
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Hey, Jim: news flash. It's
Hey, Jim: news flash. It's been 10 years since Enterasys was Cabletron. Are you still referring to Nortel as Bell Telephone of Canada?
Time to let it go, buddy. While you're at it, how about you retire your VHS copy of "Back to the Future II" and your MC Hammer Pants?
Come on, offer your opinion
Come on, offer your opinion all you want, but how DARE you suggest retiring any Back to the Future movie, regardless the format?!
:)
Drinking *way* too much koolaid!
Fact: Cabletron never actually knew how to market products to the masses. They assumed that technology, reliability and performance would outsell marketing swag and "value to the board room" sales techniques. So they were deluded.
However, the reason they are still around in *any* incarnation is that 1.2% of the market actually DOES buy based on those criteria and I *still* haven't met anyone who got fired for buying Enterasys. Not with the current port for port features and cost savings anyway.
I suspect the research time for this article would have been better spent objectively looking at Enterasys' entire portfolio of products and solutions instead of rubber stamping the blue bridge logo at the base of the article and trying to come up with witty filler-one liners to simulate originality.
Stop towing the line for Cisco, they don't need the help and you probably already have enough of their golf balls and polo shirts. In fact, at this very moment a Cisco marketing VP is calling your editor explaining the value proposition of deleting my comment.
-vjb
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