* Cisco is overwhelmingly dominant in some enterprise markets, what about other markets?
In the last newsletter we discussed how in many cases Cisco has become the overwhelmingly dominant vendor in some enterprise markets such as the enterprise switch and router market. We expressed our concern that this type of market dominance is ultimately bad for IT organizations as the lack of competition tends to result in less innovation and higher prices. We will use this newsletter to look at some other markets to see if Cisco is indeed the Goliath of those markets as well.
A very interesting market to look at is the voice market in the U.S. Not that long ago, this market was dominated by Nortel and Lucent, both of which sold a variety of equipment, but featured PBXs. We first took note of Cisco ‘s entry into the voice market in 1998 when it acquired Selsius. At that time, the competition in the voice marketplace was characterized by naivete.
For example, Nortel and Lucent were naive in that neither showed real concern about Cisco’s entry into the market nor any interest in cannibalizing their PBX market to enter the emerging IP Telephony market.
Cisco, on the other hand, went about publicly making incredibly naive statements, such as once companies deploy IP telephony “voice will be free.”
Shortly after Cisco acquired Selsius it also made naive statements behind close doors to the effect that it was well positioned in the voice market because Cisco now had twenty or thirty employees who really understood voice.
What happened to Nortel and Avaya? Nortel has been on a multiyear journey to continue to shoot itself in the foot. You almost have to feel sorry for how Avaya came to be as an independent company. It was spun out from Lucent roughly six years ago. For the months leading up to the spinoff, Rich McGinn the CEO of Lucent kept making increasingly disparaging comments about the enterprise market in general and the company that he was spinning off in particular. At spinoff, Avaya was comprised of what had been Lucent ‘s PBX products, its LAN switching products, Systimax (which provided cabling), and a services business that focused on servicing their PBXs.
Relatively soon after the spinoff, Avaya sold off Systimax and also realized that it was not a player in the LAN switching business. Earlier this year the company was taken private with the stated goal of accelerating its transformation. We wish them well because as we said, we think competition is good.
What about Cisco? In spite of its early naivete, Cisco eventually (and we don’t mean quickly) gained traction in the IP telephony market. Today, based on what market research you read, Cisco is either the No. 1 or the No. 2 player in the IP telephony market.
In the next newsletter we will continue to look at some other areas of the market to determine if Cisco is indeed the Goliath of that market and if so, is there a viable David? In the meantime, we would like to hear from you. Are you concerned about Cisco’s dominance? What markets do you see that have healthy competition?
Editor’s note: Starting Nov. 19 week, you will notice a number of enhancements to Network World newsletters that will provide you with more resources and more news links relevant to the newsletter’s subject. Beginning Monday, Nov. 12, the Wide Area Networking Newsletter, written by Steve Taylor and Jim Metzler, will be merged with the WAN News Alert and will be named the Wide Area Networking Alert. You’ll get Steve and Jim’s analysis of the convergence and WAN market, which you will be able to read in full at NetworkWorld.com, plus links to the day’s WAN news and other relevant resources. This Alert will be mailed on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We hope you will enjoy the enhancements and we thank you for reading Network World newsletters.
