Where did my tongue in cheek "are you a CISCO employee" question come from?
Fair question. SI doesn't support the sarcasm font <g>.
Seriously, NT classes "Enterprise" as a customer segment, not as a market segment. Most people don't get this, mostly because most people don't read NT's reports.
That's understandable, because like all company reports they are fairly dry documents full of legal words and numbers and so on. You would know this from the ones you skimmed when you took your MBA degree <g>.
As a business consultant <to whom, and for what purpose?>, you will quickly grasp that these customers represent multiple market segments - the telephone stuff market segment, the data network stuff market segment, and so on.
So, the revenue NT reports from these customers is the aggregate revenue across multiple market segments.
But it doesn't say what this comes from. For example, let's say the PBX business is rapidly evaporating. Let's say way cheaper VOIP data networking products are taking its place. But, without understanding the contribution from PBX sales vs data network sales into the mix, you can innocently (another word for naively) arrive at inaccurate conclusions. Particularly for a diverse business such as NT which serves both market segments (unlike, for example, CSCO).
Let's do some math using numbers I made up. What if telephone stuff like PBXs drops by 50% but data stuff grows by 100%? Let's say telephone PBX market used to be 61% of the revenue mix and data networking market used to be 39% of the mix. Revenue growth 8%, data market growth 100%. Maybe NT isn't losing market share in the market you are worried about? Maybe it's keeping share after all? Maybe it's growing share?
Your assertion that
"8% YoY growth in a customer segment is consistent so some degree in that NT is losing share"
is incorrect - or at best a highly biased perspective that ignores the equal truth of the opposite conclusion.
Furthermore, you questioned a fact that was faithfully transcribed from a rather important document released only days ago.
So either you are terrible at doing your own research and your logic machine is flawed (I seriously doubt this), or you rely on sound-bite type market blabber information provided to you by well educated but narrowly informed consultants to executives in order to rally the loyal troops against the competition (e.g. you are an employee).
Or perhaps you are a creator of such spin. I would rather suspect you of the second of these three evils.
Your profile clearly indicates you aren't a CSCO employee (outright), but does not rule out the fact that your consulting services may be currently employed for CSCO's benefit, or explain the favorable bias to CSCO that dominates your posts.
Thus, I asked a straight up question. I didn't get a straight up answer, but I'm used to that from you my friend <g>.
John.
P.S. The CSCO thread hasn't talked about meaningful news for a long time, but the permabulls are emerging from the permafrost as fearless as ever (which strongly indicates that the bottom is not yet in). |
