With dominant market share in almost every enterprise network equipment category, Cisco is the product supplier to most IT professionals, from small businesses to the top of the Fortune 500.
"You know the updated adage," says Chris Lukas, CTO of emerging technologies at Hold Brothers, a New York stock brokerage, "no one ever got fired for buying Cisco."
Yet nobody's perfect, as some users polled by Network World can attest. Here are some thoughts from die-hard Cisco customers on what their favorite network vendor could do better.
End the waiting game
"The only problem I have right now [with Cisco] is waiting for equipment," says Michael Robinson, network communications director at Jackson State University in Mississippi. "It's always hard to get products through the channel."
Robinson says he could go to other sources, such as Internet sites that sell discounted Cisco gear, or integrators that are Cisco resellers, but then he wouldn't get the educational discount he receives through his Cisco educational channel partner.
"It used to be that if I ordered something, I'd have it in a week," Robinson says. "Now I'm waiting three weeks usually for the delivery of any equipment."
"I've noticed that Cisco's time to market for new and cutting-edge products is great," says Henry Greener, network architect at Eastern Bank in Lynn, Mass. "But their time to delivery has started to worsen in the last six months to a year. Even for their low-end routers like the 2600 series - the time between order and delivery is pretty significant now."
Openness
"I would like to see Cisco embrace open standards more," says Jim Olson, CIO of Waterbury Hospital in Connecticut. "I have noticed over the years that when companies become pretty good in size, they can get arrogant as to what standards you should obey. They seem to think [everything] should be their standard." Olson cites proprietary Cisco technologies, such as Cisco's SCCP protocol for IP telephony. "I'd rather not see Cisco make up their own standards so that [their products] do not integrate with anything else; that does a real disservice to users."
While proprietary protocols could be seen as part of Cisco's effort to get customers to deploy its products end to end, this is not always the best way to build a network, others say.
"[Cisco] is trying to create an environment where they're an end-to-end solutions provider," says Bill Stevenson, network security officer for New Century Mortgage in Irvine, Calif. However, he says he prefers a more heterogeneous network deployment.
"I don't like the idea of using Cisco solely as an end-to-end network security provider," Stevenson says. "I don't like to put all of my eggs in one basket. I don't want to see a vulnerability in one place extend across the network."
Know your customer
"The ability [of Cisco] to hand off accounts from one part of the organization to another has been a problem for us," says Mitch Davis, director of academic technology and consulting at Stanford University in Palo Alto. Davis says his department recently completed an upgrade of its Cisco switches, and moved into a project to deploy Cisco Architecture for Voice, Video and Integrated Data IP telephony gear on campus. "The initial handoff didn't come off cleanly in terms of knowledge transfer about what we're doing here," between Cisco's data communications engineers and voice engineers, he says.
Davis says that while Cisco's breadth of product offerings is a plus, it also might be the limiting factor in terms of helping customers integrate different parts of their network.
"It's almost like you have to start over again," when going from one project to another, Davis says. "They quickly get up to speed, because Cisco has really smart people," Davis says, but new engineers from the same company "should not have to ask us questions about our network in the first meeting."
Software issues
"I'd like to see them a little more responsive in terms of issues with their software," says New Century Mortgage's Stevenson. "I've just seen some instabilities with some [Cisco] software products," he says, specifically with the CiscoWorks management platform. "Just like any software vendor, they need to keep their software products secure and up to date."
While the software Cisco provides for managing its hardware is very useful, Hold Brothers' Lukas says, it has its bugs just like any other pieces of code.
"I love the software features on Cisco's equipment," Lukas says. "They solve some serious issues . . . [but] I cannot stand that they have releases where things do not work from previous software versions. Cisco will sometimes add features in new versions of its management software, or even IOS, that are incompatible with older features. It really creates quite a problem."
Ethernet everywhere
"One thing I would like to see Cisco really push more is Ethernet in the first mile," Eastern Bank's Greener says. "It would be in their own best interest if Cisco could really push that initiative and work with the telcos to get them to work toward [metropolitan] networking and Ethernet in the first mile."
While Cisco has its hand in many different technologies, such as IP voice, content networking and storage, the company should be working to get WAN connection speeds up to date, Greener says. Such as initiative would be beneficial to Cisco's overall Ethernet business because Cisco already has such a strong hold of the LAN market, he adds.
"You're really subject to the slowest link in your network, which is always the first mile," Greener says.
Innovation, not acquisition
"Cisco is not first to market with new solutions," Lukas says. "Their track record shows that they acquire companies, which by definition means the solutions are out there being sold," before Cisco has them. Lukas cites technologies such as multilayer switching and VPNs as technologies Cisco acquired through acquisition.
"It is funny that some customers won't even consider certain pieces of gear, but the day after Cisco buys the company, all of a sudden it is OK to buy that product," Lukas says. "Since Cisco purchases innovation, it follows that the innovation comes from outside Cisco."
Be more direct
"I would like to buy direct," says Tom McCormick, senior technical analyst with Carnival Cruises in Miami. "One of the largest problems with Cisco is that they force you to buy through a [value-added reseller] or partner."
While VARs can be helpful for some customers, McCormick says an avenue should be available to buy direct for companies that are not "as big as General Electric," as McCormick puts it, but large enough to handle their technology.
"Their value-added resellers don't really add much value," he says. "If you are a large IT shop like us or any other large corporation, you don't need some guy to come in here to configure your switches for you. They usually know less about your network than you do. I don't need that."
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