Top 5 Cisco Christmas Wish List – Dear Santa

Number Five Christmas Wish

Cisco announces that they really can afford to give away three dollar polo shirts to customers after all. By cancelling the free drinks for staff.

Cisco Elves turned so murderous at this suggestion that it was never really considered.

Number Four Christmas Wish

CS-MARS team announces a top down overhaul and the release of a new version that actually has acceptable performance for the money.

Engineers can’t tell if this is marketing-speak, and break for Christmas with no idea about the future of the product. As usual.

Number Three Christmas Wish

Cisco Secure Access Control Server will have a new interface! Cisco announces that ACS will have a new interface that has NO JAVA, some rounded corners and coloured form fields, and someone has spent more than ten minutes thinking about the application layout (and then layered years of changes on top of the crappy interface.

Brandon Carroll will be upset, he will have to write a new book.

Number Two Christmas Wish

Cisco decides that wireless networks now ‘work’ and announces a new technology marketing program on WORKLESS™ wireless. WORKLESS ™ is a Cisco trademarked term that describes their new ‘enhanced wireless strategy and technology that encompasses ‘proprietary extensions’ that meet ‘customer requirements and developed as a result of customer requests’.

Customer Engineers promptly dub this new initiative ‘WORTHLESS’ and continue working the way they always have – configuring WPA with PSK and letting most people have access to what is needed by IPSec VPN or Lock and Key ACLs.

Security Consultants continue whining about the usual things.

Reseller Engineers still don’t care either way, so long as the job gets done.

Number One Christmas Wish

and the number one gift from Cisco this Christmas:

Cisco announces that they are cutting the marketing department by 5000, and hiring 5000 engineers instead ((thus still saving money – engineers don’t need ‘entertainment expenses‘)). “Its the least we could do for our customers. They actually expect us to deliver on these products now that we have announced them” gasped a shocked marketing executive.

What presents could Cisco Santa bring you ?