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Technology Stocks : Cisco Systems, Inc. (CSCO) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RetiredNow who wrote (62682)	1/14/2003 2:35:53 PM
From: chaz	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 77400

Nor will I take anything away from Cisco, also a great company. As I said earlier, I'm not in the industry so have no basis to presume that networking gear (hardware) is any more or less complex to manufacture than PC boxes, but I presume so anyway if only because it seems reasonable to do so. Again, I presume that performance or other measures of it would be comparable as seen by the purchaser, so the difference in brand is price. I am sure there are many customer organizations that have good experience with both Dell and Cisco, and in some of these, Dell could very well be invited to bid for what might have been a Cisco slam-dunk. I'm merely suggesting that there's a better chance of this happening than not. Market leadership may not be at risk for Cisco, but unless I'm terribly mistaken, there's no compelling IP held by Cisco as there is by MSFT, meaning that there is a soft underbelly there. Some company is going to go after it big time, slowly at first to be sure, and maybe not successfully in the end. Dell also has a strong sales organization, a fairly solid service and support reputation, and loyal customers. IBM withstood many onslaughts in the mainframe arena, and nobody got fired. Is that enough to protect Cisco, or could this become another box business? The comparison is perhaps unfair, but consider the relationship between EMC and NTAP. Through its success with "low end" (read: customers with smaller needs) has NTAP not affected EMC's margins in their high end business, or did the high end just go away temporarily? Was software still the hard part, once the shelfware hardware choice was made. Could something like this develop in networking? I'm asking, not suggesting. I agree, none of these companies are in danger of collapse. My concern is that Cisco's margins are at relatively more risk than before. chaz