Voice reliability may force Cisco into old-fashioned, Old World merger. Company's lack of circuit switching expertise make some fear networking's New World.
idg.net
By Jim Duffy
Network World Fusion, 7/15/98
San Jose, Calif. - Despite Cisco Systems, Inc.'s
intentions to go it alone in voice networking, the
company's inability to ensure the reliability of
global voice infrastructures may force the data
networking giant to marry an "Old World"
stalwart.
Cisco Chairman and CEO John Chambers
recently stated that Cisco will rely on its own
skills to develop, service and support voice
networking products after partnership talks with
Lucent Technologies, Inc. and Northern
Telecom, Ltd. collapsed. Chambers also ruled
out merging with a major voice vendor, and
characterized companies like Lucent and Nortel
as "Old World" establishments "trying to compete
in a New World environment."
Yet Cisco's ability to service and support global
packet- and circuit-switched voice networks -
much less develop voice products in a timely
manner - may not even be up to Old World
standards, analysts suggest. In a business where
carriers and their subscribers demand 24x7
uptime and 99.999% reliability, the name Cisco
may stir up more fear than comfort.
"Cisco must prove that it has the support
mechanism to keep the voice switches up
everywhere in the world," said Peter
Alissandratos, an independent
telecommunications consultant in Beekman, N.Y.
"The dilemma is, can Cisco achieve successfully
both time to market for reliable voice products
and increase [and] organize their support
mechanism? If the answer is yes, [it will be the
first time] it happened without a merger or
technology purchase. If no, then Cisco, must find
the right [large] organization to merge with. We
know Cisco is very efficient since the employee
number is low. This is good enough for
enterprises [that are] mostly data networks, but
not good enough for carriers."
Even for data networks, Cisco's recent track
record for reliability is not good. It took 36 hours
to fully restore AT&T's frame relay network after
a Cisco software glitch knocked it out last April.
"I view the frame relay meltdown as a major,
major warning," said Ron Jeffries, president of
Jeffries Research in Arroyo Grande, Calif.
Gartner Group, Inc. recently analyzed carrier
perceptions of vendors and vendor ATM
equipment. As far as equipment was concerned,
the result favored Cisco and others; but from a
trust and comfort level perspective, the results
clearly favored the Old World players.
"What [carriers] really wanted was to be able to
buy equipment from either Nortel or Lucent
because they considered them top-tier players,
they trusted them, they knew about central office
support requirements and 24x7 and rapid
response when they run into bugs," said John
Coons, director and principal analyst for wide
area networking at Gartner's Dataquest, Inc.
company. "I don't know that any of those second
tier players [which include Cisco] either fully
understand, have fully staffed or have much
experience in supporting the traditional carriers.
None of them are at the point where Lucent or
Nortel are at."
Cisco begs to differ. The company has
service-level agreements with "a couple of large
telcos," claimed Ethan Thorman, director of
marketing for customer advocacy within Cisco's
Service Provider line of business. Because of
nondisclosure agreements, he would not identify
the telcos.
"I think one of the things that is often overlooked
is that the environment that the Old World players
have is just not well suited to what is involved
with the new voice-over-IP infrastructure,"
Thorman said. "For them to say that they've got it
and Cisco doesn't is sort of to say the railroads
have had a lock on what it took to make airlines
safe in the '40s."
For carrier nets, Cisco is leveraging some of the
"electronic tools" it uses for supporting enterprise
networks, such as advance warning systems,
diagnostic monitors, and product repair, upgrade
and availability data, Thorman said. This
facilitates more rapid knowledge exchange than
putting as lot of people on-site, he said.
Cisco also will soon unveil the Cisco Framework,
a blueprint of service and support
"methodologies" and "best practices" for
deploying packet-based multiservice networks,
Thorman said. When asked if Cisco is
aggressively recruiting people with voice switch
experience, Thorman said the company inherits
voice expertise from companies it acquires, such
as the $236 million purchase of NetSpeed, Inc.,
in March.
Lastly, Cisco will continue to partner with
companies that offer expertise in areas where
Cisco can not, such as service and support for
circuit-switched gear. Thorman did not comment
on the prospect of a merger with a telecom giant,
but he did not rule it out either.
"We are never going to become a major service
company like the other companies we compete
with," Thorman said. "I don't think any one
company has all the answers. I certainly can tell
you that [Lucent and Nortel] don't have a lock on
all the answers. They lack the perspective of what
they have to do to compete in the New World
environment."
Partnerships would suit Cisco customer Sprint
Corp. just fine. Cisco is a major supplier for
Sprint's new Integrated On-demand Network
(ION) but the company will have lots of backup.
"As Sprint looked at partnering with Cisco on the
ION, we recognized that they in fact did not have
the voice telephony and reliability knowledge on
how you structure those services," said Marty
Kaplan, senior vice president and chief
technology officer at Sprint. "That's why we
brought Bellcore into the picture."
Sprint will also continue to rely on Nortel for
ION's circuit switching reliability.
Contact Senior
Editor Jim Duffy.
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