Hi Sector,
I wouldn't sell CSCO quite so short, at least not for the reasons you cite:
"But where is their DWDM?, Their Fiber and Optical Networking products? Their Metro Ring strategy? Their Terabit router? The Network of tomorrow just may pass them by."
They have not only the architectural answers to the questions you've posed, but they can buy whatever they need to fill the gaps at the flip of a switch.
I think that their future problems, at least on the high capacity access and transport sides of the business, will be deeper and harder to see than those you've referenced. In the space I've referenced (and the one that MRVC aspires to) CSCO will soon become a legacy icon, much like the telco suppliers of the past, as their platforms have formed a new base of intransigence. This will be based on its widespread acceptance by folks whose understanding of networking are limited to TCP/IP administration, but who cannot negotiate the high capacity sector due to their unpreparedness to deal with its nuances and esoterica. Many of today's enterprise gurus are yesterday's router adminstrators who got in early, don't forget. And a hammer always seeks a familiar nail.
As a point of fact, it's happening already, as I've listened to many a reason why firms cannot go this way or that way, due to the embedded architectures of just a year or two ago. We've also seen this in the past when IBM shops refused to budge from the SNA models. But now many of those same IBM shops are putting IP on the main frame, and will soon be transporting over WDM'ed facilities on high capacity routes where channel extension and SNA groups were used before.
CSCO has both the smarts and the established architectural models already on their drawing boards to answer whatever call presents itself, just as good, if not better, than most, but their sales and marketing models could not withstand the hit if they were to depart from what works for them today. At least not from a radical departure, at this time. Theirs must be incremental gains, not revolutionary ones.
We've seen and heard this all before. And so it goes...
Regards, Frank Coluccio |
