What happened? In much the same way that there are ethical lawyers who defend rapists and murderers, I don't see anything sinister in what Cisco is doing. I don't happen to like it, though. In the end, is setting prioritization and traffic policy for carriers and backbone providers really Cisco's call to make? Then again, the company is most definitely very heavily represented in the IETF. Hmm..
If you follow the school that says the service providers set their own policies, then Cisco is merely following market demand. Of course, even that is debatable, but I think Cisco is trying to remain on top, knowing full well that if they don't fill the SPs requirements in this instance, then someone else will, and while they're at it the interloper will begin further eroding market share elsewhere, as well. Unfortunately, however, in order to leverage their policy management and QoS development work that began more than ten years ago (we discussed this on the original board, if you recall) in this one area, they very likely will build an arsenal of other susbsystem fabrics that will serve to perpetuate the philosophy into bigger and more convuluted frameworks into the future.
During the same period that elapsed since they were chanting the empowerment thing, Cisco quietly shifted its sales focus, in order to be more inclusive (always hedging their way, they are ... ), to the large common carrier side of the universe, as well. Where unit profits for CRS-1 and CMTS gear seem to be producing better margins with less toil than Linksys sales. I may be off on my margin analysis, but not in identifying the whys and wherefores of its new market direction. |
