* Cisco's IOS changes
Cisco is planning big changes to the way it sells IOS, its operating systems for routers and switches, and my colleague Phil Hochmuth this week has more details on how the company plans to pull it off.
The big changes involve making the software more modular and more independent from the hardware it runs on. As Hochmuth notes, this should make it easier for users to add features to their equipment more quickly.
It’s also long overdue. Cisco has built IOS as this monolithic thing that gets more features in every release – but all those changes mean that users have to make sure that new features don’t break what they already have in their networks.
Still, it could not have been an easy decision for Cisco to reevaluate the entire architecture of the software that runs its bread and butter.
I used to cover IBM as a reporter, and certainly in the ’90s IBM went through some pretty intense, monumental changes when it came to its mainframe business. Mainframes used to dominate computing, and IBM used to dominate mainframes, and everything was fine for IBM. But then Unix boxes and PCs came along, and many observers starting writing off mainframes for good. IBM was forced to adapt those mainframes to work in a distributed rather than centralized environment, and today mainframes are still around.
I bring that scenario up only because, like IBM, Cisco is in a dominant place in its industry, and now finds it must transform its core product. Is the company feeling the heat from things like open-source routers now coming onto the scene? Or overseas players like Huawei?
Whatever the driver, if Cisco can make itself more nimble, that certainly can’t hurt – and IBM’s example may be proof that the market is willing to accept the change.
