Cisco: the only safe choice?

Kevin Jennings

November 30, 2015

This is part 2 of a series titled "Demythologizing Cisco"

This is part 2 of a series titled "Demythologizing Cisco" 

Safety, it might be said, is in the eye of the beholder. A sense of safety is often based on objective, observable, scrutinize-able and falsifiable data points.  In many other instances, 它更多地是基于主观感觉或印象，而不是基于客观事实.  So, which is it when it comes to purchasing and deploying Cisco solutions versus the offerings of its competitors?  答案并不是一成不变的，可以根据具体情况而定.  我的观察是:在每一个案例中，购买思科的所谓“安全性”都是其选择的重要合法依据, there are a dozen or more cases where it does not. More accurately, 思科提供的相对安全优势远远超过了其他因素, 例如比较技术和整体价值主张(即:所获得的价格), it’s not necessarily so.

切入最重要的一点——在选择技术解决方案时考虑安全性, 归根结底，问题在于制造商是否会继续经营下去, will they be continuing to develop on the product, 他们会在产品在你的网络中使用的生命周期内为产品提供服务吗.  Network infrastructure products possess notoriously brief lifecycles, 部分原因是由于迅速增长的带宽和其他通信需求对他们提出了要求, 部分原因是人为的推广和采用最新最伟大的技术，这些技术是由供应商培育的，也被商界所采用.  无论您对给定网络基础设施部署的生命周期有什么期望, 市场似乎已经投票支持3到5年的时间.  As such, when looking at networking equipment, 人们必须考虑所考虑的供应商是否可能在那段时间内可行, 很可能在这段时间里对设备进行改进和维修.  我无法告诉你有多少次我遇到真正聪明的人选择加入思科, and happily paying the Cisco tax as a result, 理由是这对他们来说是唯一安全的选择.

Let me get this straight...  真的有人相信惠普会在未来五年内破产吗?  Is Dell?  Is ALE (operating under the brand Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise), the company which I represent, going to go under in the next five years?  The answers are, no, no and no! Taking ALE as an example, 我可以告诉你，加州州立大学系统不相信这一点.  CSU正在进行一项为期8年的技术基础设施升级计划，其中超过4年的时间将持续三年,000台思科数据交换机正在被阿尔卡特朗讯企业交换机所取代.  如果基社盟不认为ALE是一个安全的选择，那将是基社盟最愚蠢的选择.  They consider ALE a safe choice, and so should you.

In a very real sense, this question of safety is binary.  Either a vendor is safe or it is not.  Cisco is safe.  HP is safe.  Dell is safe.  ALE is safe.  A host of other vendors are safe.  “Cisco is the only safe choice” is a myth, deftly and effectively promulgated by the mythmaker, Cisco itself.

Bandwagon Safety

如果人多安全是真的，那么我想思科在这一点上确实赢了.  If one wants to be on the bandwagon and to blend into the crowd, buying Cisco puts a person right there.  It appears as a safe place to be.  But only if one completely ignores all other considerations.  思科对成为该俱乐部成员的人收取极高的溢价, 而成员身份所传达的无非是一种情感强化，即一个人正在做大多数人都在做的事情, 不管这样做是否对整体经济管理有意义.

The Safety of Unaccountability

This one is closely related to concept behind the saying, “没有人因为收购思科而被解雇”(值得在本系列的下一篇文章中单独讨论).  选择与市场份额领先的公司合作，让人觉得躲在“不受指责”的保护伞下，有一种安全感, 尤其是像思科这样给自己打造了一种神秘感的公司.  I don’t have a silver bullet comeback for this one.  如果一个人衡量是否采用一个解决方案的主要标准是“不管结果如何”, I will be in the clear and can’t be truly held accountable for it,” Cisco might be the right choice.  Then again, 许多领导人一想到在这种基础上做决定就不寒而栗, choosing instead to weigh all factors, including their responsibility to achieve not only excellence, but at the same time optimal value for their organization.  许多领导者希望对自己的错误负责，因为他们认为这是对出色工作的奖励的必要平衡.  To them, 躲在一个供应商后面，仅仅因为这个供应商的名字就可以通过，这是他们所避免的令人不快的前景.

Value without Compromising on Safety

If Cisco is the only safe choice, 任何决策过程都可以通过消除所有其他考虑因素而简化.  After all, it would be imprudent not to implement a safe choice.  If, as I have argued, Cisco is not the only safe choice, and there are instead many other safe options, including ALE, then other decision criteria such as technical merit, serviceability, price and TCO assume their rightful place in the process.  当他们这样做时，思科将面临一系列挑战，以成为最佳解决方案.  这就是为什么思科指望它的前景能够在缺乏安全性的基础上排除所有其他供应商 before any real evaluation begins.

It has been said that, “Nobody ever got fired for buying Cisco.”  Is this really true?  我们将在“揭穿思科神话”系列的下一部分讨论这个问题.