Comments

1. armorguy says:

   1 December 2009 at 20:41

   I think Cisco makes superb rout­ing and switch gear for the enter­prise — there’s noth­ing else quite like it.

   That being said, Cisco has not done a great job as a “secur­ity com­pany” (MARS, any­one??? CSA???)

   True enough that the line between secur­ity devices and net­work devices is blurry (if it even still exists) but I don’t see that Cisco is really a secur­ity partner.

   That could change but it isn’t the case today IMHO.

   Reply
2. Santino Rizzo says:

   1 December 2009 at 21:03

   CIsco products aren’t always best-​​of-​​breed, but they offer com­pel­ling end-​​to-​​end solu­tions. However, SMARTnet is pure evil.

   Reply
3. Dan Hughes says:

   1 December 2009 at 21:16

   I think Cisco is hard to get reli­gious about. I use Cisco kit every day, their Tac is great, their products gen­er­ally pretty good, i love the IOS, but the com­pany is just ‘blah’.

   Cisco’s biggest issue is their arrog­ance. I seem to expect our busi­ness. So I think it’s import­ant we push back. Use the best product for the job, design without vendor in mind.

   Reply
4. Sean says:

   1 December 2009 at 21:18

   My account team has been get­ting a lot more pushy, and our costs for main­tain­ing our Cisco voice infra­struc­ture have been going up and up. I love Cisco for rout­ing and switch­ing, but for other stuff I’ve been get­ting a lot less excited about them.

   That’s one reason behind me try­ing a career change (my last day as a net­work guy is Monday) ; Cisco just isn’t “fun” anymore.

   Reply
5. René Jorissen says:

   1 December 2009 at 22:57

   I totally agree with Dan Hughes. I just love the Cisco equip­ment, espe­cially the rout­ing and switch­ing gear. I notice that there is a “battle” between Cisco and other vendor in the Netherlands. Most man­agers tend too choose the cheapest solu­tion, without con­sult­ing the tech­nical engineers.

   From a tech­nical per­spect­ive I would choose Cisco for rout­ing and switch­ing. The fea­ture set is just enorm­ous and the troubleshoot­ing cap­ab­il­it­ies are much bet­ter then most other vendors. But as Dan men­tions, Cisco is just one big arrog­ant com­pany. We are try­ing to arrange a part­ner­ship with Cisco, but after 2 months, hun­dreds of phone calls and e-​​mails we still have no result.

   But it is good to broaden your hori­zon and also look at other vendors. We con­sult­ant our cus­tom­ers with the best solu­tion for there net­work and every net­work is dif­fer­ent. For some net­works HP ProCurve cov­ers the rout­ing and switch­ing, some­times we choose CheckPoint or Juniper for fire­walling and Aruba or Colubris for wire­less solu­tions. Luckily Cisco isn’t the only player at the market.…

   Reply
6. Wesley "Nonapeptide" says:

   2 December 2009 at 17:38

   Cisco hard­ware seems to be over­priced and their sup­port con­tracts equally so. ProCurve FTW!! Free life­time sup­port for the life of the product? Free hard­ware replace­ment for as long as HP is a com­pany? And still people buy Cisco! What am I missing??

   Of course, I real­ize that ProCurve does not offer the same large scale rout­ing and switch­ing equip­ment as cisco does. For all but the most intense applic­a­tions, ProCurve sends Cisco home cry­ing, IMO.

   Reply
   • Greg Ferro says:

     3 December 2009 at 21:09

     HP ProCurve is still hav­ing some teeth­ing prob­lems. Jeremy Gaddis has doc­u­mented a num­ber of prob­lems and they ended up tak­ing al the kit back. My impres­sion: ProCurve isn’t quite ready, but will be in a year or two.

     Reply