Analysis: Cisco's WAN strategy is anyone's guess
By Jim Duffy
Network Solutions
FRAMINGHAM - Now that Cisco Systems has killed off its ATM switch for the
core of enterprise and service provider WANs, the company's plans for this
segment of the market are unclear.
Cisco is banking on increased sales of WAN switching gear to enterprises and
service providers to drive the company's growth. But this week's news that
Cisco discontinued development of its core WAN switch and delayed another
enterprise switch for a year indicates that success for Cisco in this market
may be more challenging than expected.
Analysts, competitors and other Cisco watchers say the company's long-term
WAN switching strategy for enterprises and service providers is still
unfocused three years after Cisco's $4 billion acquisition of StrataCom.
They say Cisco has shipped only one new WAN switching platform since it
acquired StrataCom -- the MGX 8850 IP/ATM edge switch, which is shipping in
limited volume.
Other platforms are merely upgrades of existing StrataCom architectures. And
Cisco has lost market share in frame relay WAN switching since acquiring
StrataCom, according to Vertical Systems Group of Massachusetts.
"In frame switching they've decreased because [Ascend's Cascade switches]
got developed and rolled out," says Rosemary Cochran, principal at Vertical
Systems Group.
Cisco rebuffed repeated requests from Network World this week for interviews
with company executives on the state of its WAN switching business. Cisco
did, however, respond to queries from other publications regarding this
topic as those publications contacted IDG for commentary.
Among the questions swirling around Cisco's WAN switching business are
these:
What is Cisco's strategic core WAN switch?
Is Cisco truly "agnostic" when it comes to IP and ATM technologies for the
WAN?
How has Cisco benefited from its StrataCom acquisition?
Does Cisco still have -- or has it ever had -- a strategy for WAN switching
at the edge and core of enterprise and service provider networks?
The death of the 20Gbps TGX 8750 seems to leave Cisco without a core IP/ATM
WAN switch to challenge offerings from Ascend, Newbridge and Nortel and with
a gaping hole in its "end-to-end" voice/data system story. >From a
short-term revenue standpoint, that may not be disastrous because Cisco has
said in the past that the revenue potential at the edge of the network is 15
times that of the core.
But longer term, a lack of presence in the core may mean a lack of customer
lock-in and the additional hardware and software revenue that comes with it.
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