On 3/11/10 6:13 AM, TS Lura wrote:
Dear OpenBSD community,
I'm doing a small research paper on Cisco and try to find out if they are
"evil" or not in relative to open/free source/standards, and business
practice. Eg. locking people to their product line aka the MS way.
I'm sending this mail to you guys because I think many of you know allot
about networking, and the networking industry. I'm hoping that someone would
be kind and share some of their impressions of Cisco with me.
My hypothesis is that Cisco is following the best business practice in
relation to proprietary and open/free source.
To answer this hypothesis I'm trying to find out if Cisco is using their
proprietary solution when there is a better open/free alternative.
My preliminary thoughts is taken from what I have perceived, that Cisco
makes a proprietary solution to give them a edge and uniqueness in the
marked which they can harvest capital from. And when that solution has
become commonplace they switch over to non-proprietary solutions to become
more interoperable and thus stay competitive.
First, Is this reasonable observation?
Second, Are there any deviations from this trend? If so, why?
I'm very grateful for any reply I get.
Kind regards,
TSLura.
Well, this is a big question and you will get a very wide feedback and I
would guess, not much good one, but I sure could wrong.
For my own having to deal with them for years and have sadly plenty of
SmartNet contract as well, they only thing I can tell you, and there is
a lot. The only time I ear from Cisco, even if some IOS may have big
bugs in them and that may affect me, they will only contact me when the
SmartNet time to renew comes! One would thank that they may follow up
with their own urgent fix, but no!
For the ISL, you already got that reply, but a few years ago, they still
were trying to force you to buy their switches and use ISL over the
standard 802.11Q!
For VoIP, even if SIP is the wide standard, they still try to lock you
in their Skiny protocol over the wide standard one and even if you hve
smartnet on their 7960 SIP phones, unless you use their own proprietary
system they will not support the SIP standard and provide IOS upgrade
for it as they should, even with smartnet. They called meon that and try
to talk me init, but I cancel ALL the smartnet for ANY Cisco IP phones
and that's a lots of them. What's the point of having smartnet if you
can't get IOS upgrades and there answer was for the physical device if
it break, you get it replace and all. Well, you know what, if it break I
can replace if with Polycom instead and they support it better then
Cisco does! But if I can't do that, then even getting a new Cisco is
better and cheaper int he end then having a worthless smartnet on the
phones!
As for OpenStandard, CARP and VRRP is a good example, you can research
that if you like. That's an OpenBSD solution over a Cisco suppose to be
Open one!
Then you have the same thing when you need new equipment, if you tell
Cisco that you are looking at competition product of their, then you
will get discount as long as you know what you are talking about on the
hardware. Never on the SmartNet. But very interestingly here, if you
talk about Open solutions, like the bgpd or even the ospfd, or better
yet, the upcoming MPLS, then you really get them talking and yes, they
will call you and try to talk to you in not touching that telling you
all kind of bullshit that it's not supported, that you will get problem,
it will not work, that you will be better served by Cisco and they will
stand by you to help you in emergency and all that crap sale talk.
Don't get me wrong Cisco does have good product for most of them. They
will help some, may be not as they should for sure if you have SmartNet,
but that will cost you big time!
However, you will be stuck in this endless continuous under power
hardware that needs constant upgrade all the time and they will suck you
dry in smartnet contract for not much servic in the end provided sadly
in the last few years by 1/2 the time from people that you can't even
understand when you talk to them. Sadly the one I find the best are when
you open your ticket at night and you get them from down under in
Australia. They follow up better and give you better feedback then sadly
anyone so far I got in the US and definitely much better then when you
are so unlucky to get them from Asia when they follow their script to
the letter for most of them when you talk tot hem. You will get some
good one at time, but by far it's not the norm as long as you can
understand them. Don't get me wrong, some are very nice and know their
stuff, but that's not the norm by far and for the price you have to pay
for your smartnet, you sure hell have the right to expect BETTER!!!
In short, my own experience is as follow. The niceness of Cisco is
directly in reverse of the choice of solution you pick being the start
with proprietary Cisco, to competition then to open solution.
And so far, looks to me and I am more then welling to be wrong, looks
like they will only embrace open standard when they are totally force to
do so, or that market at large have gone away with their own proprietary
solutions, but they will do everything they can to keep you locked in
their own solutions.
That's why every time you need hardware and you talk to your sale
person, you end up in conference calls with their sale engineers and the
conversation will changed from friendly, to, well kind of aggressive
when you bring competition product and are able to provide comparative
results to them asking not the Cisco solution they try to sale to you,
but what they could provide to compete with what you are looking at and
all the way to down rude and aggressive if you bring very good open
solutions on the table. Then get ready to have the full blown history of
being wrong to even think about it and in some cases a full story of sad
example of users being stuck for not selecting Cisco gear. True or not,
they will give you a bunch of it and reminded you that it's wrong. And
they will also remind you that if yu cancel your smartnet for example
and wants to get it back as they say you will need sooner or later that
they "Cisco" will need to do a full re-evaluation of your setup to see
if they can or will provide you SmartNet again on your equipment that
may or may not be supported then, but if you stay with them, it will be
for sure.
So, draw your own conclusion.
But personally, when a company try to lock me in more, I have the
opposite reaction every time, I go away from them and if possible for
good. In case of Cisco, yes they do have good equipment, not my issue
with them, but always under power, that makes me crazy! But their own
attitude torde other actually have the effect to make me look more at
alternative product being open or not and proprietary competitive one,
like Juniper, yes, but even more theses days as Brocade as they do have
pretty interesting product and good one and I can tell you by personal
experience, Cisco do not like when you talk to Juniper, but they down
right HATE it big time when you bring up Brocade and I wouldn't be
surprise if one day Cisco flay buy out Brocade to them them out of
competing with them! Mark my word on that one. If it continue like this
I can tell you for sure it will happened as they HATE them right out and
every time Cisco hated a competitive company like this, they always buy
them out! Every time!
Anyway, that's my own experience and other may have different one and I
have been using Cisco for 15 years so far. It's been time in history
where they were nicer and sure cared more, or appear to care more
anyway. May be just the size of them make them care less, but I will
leave that alone. However, NEVER in history could you get a product from
them that wasn't under power, for what the sale engineer tell you, you
need to meet your requirement at the time of purchase, never!
Best,
Daniel
PS: May be sounded like a rat, but really as strange as it looks, it's
not as if I started to really RAT, there wouldn't be an end to it. (;>
