The 10 most powerful companies in enterprise networking

[icecream-guy]

Hey Arista guys, look at who's #5 !!!

http://www.networkworld.com/article/3211410/lan-wan/the-10-most-powerful-companies-in-enterprise-networking.html

[deanwebb]

Hey Arista guys, look at who's #5 !!!

http://www.networkworld.com/article/3211410/lan-wan/the-10-most-powerful-companies-in-enterprise-networking.html

Often, I don't come away from a top-10 list without a complaint, but this one seemed pretty well justified.

I'm wearing my Cisco polo shirt on my last day at Global Megacorp, GmbH before I start wearing $VENDOR polo shirts. Starting tomorrow, I'll be at a company that's not on the top 10 list, but which is still taking a whack at Cisco in a particular niche.

Which begs a question: what happens if a firm chooses to go with niche players, best-of-breed guys in each of their respective corners, and leaves Cisco out entirely or in a limited "just another vendor" role? How easy is it to find guys to support that non-Cisco stuff? How easy is it to make that other stuff talk to each other?

I already know part of the answer to the second question - lots of vendors outside of Cisco plan for multi-vendor operations and will build in command sets for Juniper, Palo Alto, etc. There's also SNMP and Syslog, which can be very straightforward information and management tools across all vendors.

The first question, though... that's always a sticking point for a smaller vendor. With Cisco stuff all over the globe, a smaller vendor has to find a way to get training into the minds of new and looking guys out there so that they can claim a skill that makes their technology an option that doesn't leave a question mark when it comes to training.