Cisco could use some help with video, org charts and network management systems
Cisco and Microsoft are two of the most powerful companies in the IT industry and it seems everyone has strong opinions about them. We’ve assembled several of our top bloggers from Network World’s Cisco Subnet community and asked them what they would change if they could give Cisco a makeover. (See related story, Giving Microsoft a Makeover).
Cisco and Microsoft are two of the most powerful companies in the IT industry and it seems everyone has strong opinions about them. We’ve assembled several of our top bloggers from Network World’s Cisco Subnet community and asked them what they would change if they could give Cisco a makeover. (See related story, Giving Microsoft a makeover).
Video, optical and theft, oh my!
You can’t point to any one problem Cisco needs to address, but there are several areas where it can improve.
First up is expanding its videoconferencing/TelePresence reach into mid-level and desktop markets. The company understands its current TelePresence tools are too expensive and elaborate for that market and just bought market leader Tandberg to rectify the problem. Now the trick will be to integrate the offerings where reasonable to create a product line that will enable an enterprise to support video everywhere from the boardroom to that small remote branch office.
Speaking of support, Cisco’s optical business could use some… or is it on life support? Cisco finally shuttered the old Petaluma, Calif., headquarters of Cerent, the optical company it acquired for $6.9 billion in 1999. Though the facility was mothballed for years, the closure is a fitting symbol of Cisco’s fortunes in the optical business for the past several years: The Cerent product only garnered a 3.7% share of the 2009 third quarter $1.4 billion worldwide market for multiservice SONET/SDH platforms, according to Dell’Oro Group. That makes Cisco 10th – yes, 10th – in market share, hardly the No. 1 or No. 2 it shoots for when it enters a new market, and in terms of revenue certainly well shy of the $1 billion yardstick by which Cisco typically measures acquisition success.
And let’s note that Cerent was the biggest Cisco buy at that time, matched only by the Scientific-Atlanta purchase of 2005. Yet sales of the Cerent product – Cisco’s ONS 15454 SONET/SDH multiservice provisioning platform (MSPP) – and other optical systems have been in decline for several years. A $1 billion-plus business in the early part of the decade, the ONS 15454 generated less than $300 million in revenue in 2008, according to Dell’Oro Group. Cisco should cut and run.
Another challenging market for Cisco is WAN optimization. Year in and year out, Cisco’s Wide Area Application Services (WAAS) tools are outshined in this market by Riverbed and BlueCoat. In fact, in Gartner’s influential Magic Quadrant Cisco is considered a “challenger” compared with BlueCoat and Riverbed (and there were even reports circulating that Cisco was reluctant to install WAAS in its own network). It’s time for Cisco to get serious about WAN optimization, by either making over its current tools or acquiring a leading supplier.
Lastly, this is not so much a product issue but a policing issue: Cisco needs to reign in the fraud that pervades its SMARTNet product service, maintenance and support program. Every quarter there seems to be another reseller ensnared in a scheme to defraud Cisco of millions of dollars by ordering replacement parts for switches and routers and then reselling them.
This practice has been common for years, judging by the perps that are caught. But these are only the people who are caught. Consider how many are still out there getting away with it. Cisco, it’s time to clean up this program. This reflects as badly on you as it does on the perpetrators.
Cisco needs a simpler org chart
Over the years I’ve offered lots of opinions about how Cisco could improve, but if I had to boil it down to the top three I would say it needs to change its leadership structure, hold its channel in higher esteem and improve its public relations tactics.
Cisco is organized around what Chambers says is a collaborative management structure — 59 standing boards and councils. But I side with Robert Cyran of Breakingnews.com who says “This seems like a recipe for endless meetings, management confusion and reduced accountability.”
In my makeover of Cisco I would have Cisco add a strong, highly technical No. 2 person in leadership. Chambers has been CEO for 14 years and has been both CEO and chairman of the board since November 2006 when he took over both roles. In 2006 Cisco earned $5.6 billion on $28.5 billion in sales, a 20% margin, and for fiscal 2009 (ended July 25), Cisco earned $6.1 billion on $36 billion, a 17% margin. Perhaps Chambers could move out of the CEO role but stay on as chairman.
I would then simplify the management organization and require most of Cisco’s management to demonstrate understanding of its own technology by obtaining at least one certification. Of the 59 executive members of Cisco’s upper management ranks, only two are CCIEs.
My makeover would also be aimed at helping Cisco’s channel. Cisco needs to halt its backslide in the eyes of its resellers. It is famous for offering channel partners some of the lowest profit margins in the industry. But does Cisco use the margin advantage to produce new products for partners to sell? Not exactly. It is developing no fewer than 30 new areas to pursue, what Chambers calls “market adjacencies,” some of which will see Cisco selling directly to customers, cutting out the channel, and others that are targeted at consumer markets.
Two respective examples are EOS and the Flip Video camera. EOS is a hosted, white-label software platform geared toward media and entertainment companies. Cisco has said it will market services directly to EOS customers. On the opposite side of the spectrum is Flip, which Cisco acquired by paying $747 million for its maker, Pure Digital. The camera is sold by retailers to the consumer market.
I would also hold Cisco’s Public Relations staff accountable. Cisco lists 57 PR contacts on its Web site. Whenever I call one I end up in voice mail. No problem, I’ll call the individual’s cell phone. But again I end up in voice mail. In reality, it’s impossible to actually speak with a “live” Cisco Public Relations representative. As currently structured, there’s no accountability at Cisco PR. My makeover of Cisco would result in a PR phone number that’s answered by a live person.
Reese cofounded BradReese.com, an independent reseller of refurbished network gear.
Taking the pain out of NMS
I am a Cisco employee (though I once worked for a Cisco competitor), so its weird for me to recommend a direction for Cisco because I know the folks inside (and I know the butt whoppin’ I can get for doing this)! But I’m still game …
I grew up in a small abandoned mining town in Tennessee. Everybody knew everyone. Now I live in a bigger town. We have a group of folks we know in town, like a clique in high school (truthfully, it’s exactly like the clique. Our kids get friends and we become friends with their parents.).
Cisco is like a big town. Different groups really do not advertise how their products works with other Cisco parts and pieces. Engineers share data and tips over a dinner table in Building 17, but data rarely travels to the marketing goobers responsible for getting that info to the field-type geeks. As a former Cisco competitor, I can tell you that Cisco’s Achilles’ heel is that it’s hard to keep track of all of the parts and pieces in a Cisco network.
The best answer should be to turn to network management, but that’s easier said than done. Cisco has so many methods to manage its gear — APIs, EEM, SNMP MIBS, AXP and so on – that it is almost too much of a good thing and can result in information overload.
I would love to see Cisco look at NMS through the eyes of two groups of folks: developers and engineers. For developers, the site http://developer.cisco.com is a great start. We can select the APIs or a SDK and rock on the code stack! I hope that Cisco always keeps resources dedicated to us code jockeys.
As for engineers, we love cookbook formats that are based on solid experience. Some of the best Cisco Press books out there today are the ones written by Technical Assistance Center (TAC) engineers. TAC is on the global frontlines and has the best info. I would love to see Cisco create Network Management Certified Design Guides on the top 10 non-bug issues that Cisco TAC sees each year.
For example, maybe Cisco could solve the top 10 NMS configuration issues with an Embedded Event Manager (EEM) script instead of making users troll through logs to read on VSS. CiscoWorks would be an even quicker and smoother method. And it would be even better if the design guides we do offer showed off two sides, no-cost options and fee-based options.
With the breadth of products we have, network management systems sometimes seem to get treated like an afterthought, like we’re saying, “Oh yeah and we have this too.” We have great NMS tools at Cisco, we just need to do a better job sharing the information.
Purser, a well known trainer and popular speaker, is the technical co-host for Cisco’s TechWise and BizWise TV.
