Jeff, I guess we all wrestle with long term...
When we first started our WLAN analysis (back in 1999) we compared a bunch of vendors: Lucent, Aironet ready to become Cisco, Cabletron, Symbol. We eventually picked Lucent for its superior design in term of upgradability (we still have the same APs 6-7 years later!). The AP ownership changed 3 times (Lucent>Agere>Proxim>Terabeam but kept the Proxim name) What we learned from this experience is that a well tought out design has bigger chances to be acquired if the company fails and survive the long term. The color of the hardware might change ;-) If you look for instance at ARUBA, a lot of energy has been spent on the hardware (and a lot needs to be spent on the web interface, sorry Aruba!), I doubt that even if Aruba fails there wouldn't be a Siemens or Nortel or some Chinese company ready to acquire assets and support existing customers. What is the alternative? 100% of the world on Cisco... Philippe ---------------------------------- Philippe Hanset University of Tennessee, Knoxville Office of Information Technology Network Services 108 James D Hoskins Library 1400 Cumberland Ave Knoxville, TN 37996 Tel: 1-865-9746555 ---------------------------------- On Wed, 5 Dec 2007, Jeffrey Sessler wrote: > I'm curious for those that have opted to deploy wireless solutions from > vendors other than Cisco, how much of your decision was based on business > case vs the technical aspects of the vendor's product? > > My difficulty so far with most of the non-Cisco vendors is with predicting > their long-term viability within the WLAN space. Even Aruba, at #2, with only > a 10% market share, doesn't seem to be gaining on Cisco, but rather, is > fighting it out with the others in the space. Aruba and others are still > losing money, I heard Meru may be looking for a buyer, etc. > > Thus, it seems difficult to predict where Aruba, or others for that matter, > will be in 3-5 years, making it a tough business case to invest in these > vendors. Who knows, Aruba may not be there, or could be purchased if there is > another round of industry consolidation. After all, who would have predicted > Cisco's purchase of Airespace in 2005. > > Has anyone else wrestled with this? > > Thanks > Jeff > > Jeffrey D Sessler > Assistant Director of Technical Services > Scripps College > > > ********** > Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent > Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/. > ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/.
