State of the RS market: IDC update

[wintermute000]

http://www.crn.com/slide-shows/networking/300081109/idc-ciscos-networking-market-share-dominance-slipping-as-it-battles-hpe-huawei.htm


re: Huawei switching, better not be that blasted HP Comware syntax! ugh
Juniper's inability to capitalise on their routing heritage to sell more switches is a bit confusing. The technology seems solid. Just so bad @ marketing.


Not sure if losing low single digit % is really 'market dominance slipping'...

[Dieselboy]

For Juniper to make more dolla, they need to get into the movie / film market. Pretty much every movie has Cisco phones, Cisco telepresence, Cisco WebEx etc.

[Otanx]

So Cisco currently owns 59% of the switching market, with HPE in second at 9.7%? I don't think Cisco is in trouble because of (as wintermute said) a single digit percentage drop. The thing is that Cisco is slow, but they get there. They don't try anything cool and new. They lag several years, and let the small and new companies experiment, and take the risk that feature X is really wanted or not. So companies like Arista and Cumulus will pop up. Do innovative things, and grab some market share. Finally Cisco will see the light, and develop whatever it is that is causing them to leave. It may take a few tries, but they will get there. Then the Cisco marketing Gorilla takes over, and "Nobody was ever fired for buying Cisco" kicks in.

Look at ACI. They were late to the whole SDN thing. Now they woke up, and are moving forward. Of course right now ACI seems to suck (Just going off of what I have heard, not played with it). However, version 2 or 3 will start to work, and maybe not as well as other vendors, but good enough. Then it is the stick with what you know, buy Cisco, hire some CCNAs, and you are now doing SDN. You don't even know why, but you are. I also have a prediction that they are going to announce a version of IOS that can run on whitebox switches/routers. Reading press releases Cisco talks about becoming a services company. Even in the article linked above there is a quote about being "software driven". They may even go as far as re-badging some whitebox hardware with a Cisco model, and sell that as well just to try and grab the hardware cash, but there really isn't much there.

I could probably write more, but I need to go to bed sometime tonight. Maintenance tomorrow, and doing it with one eye open, and no coffee (no liquids in the DC) isn't fun.

-Otanx

[wintermute000]

Look at ACI. They were late to the whole SDN thing. Now they woke up, and are moving forward. Of course right now ACI seems to suck (Just going off of what I have heard, not played with it). However, version 2 or 3 will start to work, and maybe not as well as other vendors, but good enough. Then it is the stick with what you know, buy Cisco, hire some CCNAs, and you are now doing SDN. You don't even know why, but you are.

I don't agree, but I don't want to start a religious debate in a public forum

What I am excited about is some of the upcoming APIC-EM and NFV developments. Enterprises will jump all over it as its solving immediate problems (automation, QoS, WAN visibility, service chaining) and naturally extending what people are already familiar with.


What I am not so excited about is that there's still no sign of  any developments for providing a nice uniform API in the IOS space - they don't even talk about onePK anymore.... meanwhile all other vendors are moving forwards at full speed to allow open orchestration. 

[deanwebb]

In security, I *do* know some guys that got fired for buying Cisco.

Back in 2000, Microsoft talked about becoming a services company. Loads of consulting hours got billed after that... Cisco already has its licensing fees rolling in, so the trick there is to keep customers locked in and paying those fees regularly. Tack on professional services bookings, and it's got more revenue.

Perhaps Cisco plans to start assimilating some of its VARs?