Cisco Faces Resistance To Software Bundles from Cost-Conscious Companies 27
For years, Cisco has relied on a widely used tactic to drive sales: The enterprise tech giant pitches customers on large bundles of products that include everything from its core networking products to more peripheral offerings from its sprawling portfolio, such as security software and its Webex videoconferencing app. But now customers are starting to resist buying the company's bundles, The Information reported Wednesday, citing current and former Cisco employees. From the report: Corporate IT departments, under pressure to save money, are picking through their Cisco enterprise agreements with a fine-toothed comb to cut out products they don't use as much, the people said. Industry executives say a similar trend is happening across the enterprise software industry, which spells problems for big firms such as Microsoft and Oracle that also encourage customers to buy a wide array of products in suites. Cisco's customers are balking at offers to renew contracts that include software licenses for tools the companies don't feel they use enough to justify, employees say. That has contributed to a slowing in sales of some of its subscription-based software, including Webex, AppDynamics and certain security products, employees say.
been this way (Score:4, Insightful)
I have a vendor come in to talk to me about a Cisco phone system. They spent an hour talking about a bunch of Cisco subscription products like WebEx and how Cisco can solve all kinds of issues for me. They didn't like it when I said that I'm not trying to solve those problems and aren't we here to talk phone systems. They didn't want just the phone system, they wanted an all or nothing vendor relationship. Well, fuck Cisco I don't need that over-priced buggy crap.
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Where I work, all Cisco phones were dumped when our offices moved a year or 2 ago. Now we use WEBEX and Slack.
I think after say 2010, I found the Cisco phone useless.
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For conference rooms, most of us just toss out the old Cisco Systems, get a big TV and a conference room Webcam with additional microphones.
Desktop phones are still popular in hospitals and military.
WebEx is truly the dumbest thing to
Cisco has bad internal problems. (Score:4, Informative)
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Their licensing strategy is just a headache - the equipment will expire due to not being able to buy licenses, not that the hardware is bad or outdated.
This will kill second hand market for Cisco equipment when all you can get is a brick. Second hand equipment is great for startups and to build experience with.
Meanwhile there are competing brands like Ubiquiti and Mikrotik that now are offering competing products at a lot lower price.
Things that Cisco has that can be a positive for them is that their hardwa
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Cost cutting and Cisco? (Score:1)
I feel like if these IT depts were really interested in cost cutting, they'd have avoided Cisco entirely to this point.
I know there are die hard Cisco users, but their demands have always been excessive. I could never see the overall value in their products vs alternatives.
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Trouble is, Cisco makes some of the best boxes for forwarding and routing traffic, and makes well-integrated systems for central management of both wired and wireless connectivity.
The problem is that Cisco is trying to migrate from being a company that sells nifty boxes that happen to run software into a company that licenses software on a recurring basis. They don't want to sell you a router or switch or AP or controller that you pay for once, they're trying to sell you a system that you effectively lease
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Cisco is becoming niche (Score:2)
With the likes of cheaper (and solid) alternatives (like Ubiquiti), small to medium size businesses are not buying Cisco anymore. This has forced Cisco to sell more crap to larger enterprises to keep their revenue high.
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Add to it that Cisco have introduced a bunch of low grade stuff like the Meraki instead of actually trying to make the best of what they have. Internally competing products rarely helps sales.
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Meraki was intended for the small businesses though, where the IT guy may not have extensive network training.
I had a Meraki switch for personal use for a couple of years until the license ran out. I won't deny that it was easier to manage for a simple-ish configuration with multiple VLANs than a Catalyst or even a Small Business series switch. But it also generally lacked the features of the higher-end models. I could see that model working well for small office applications, but it doesn't necessarily
Cisco is all mobbed up (Score:2)
Cisco works hard to make their customers top-to-bottom Cisco. With certification programs so their staff prefers Cisco. And with bundles that make it difficult to add competitor's equipment in the stack. In any other industry this behavior is treated legally as anticompetitive. But Cisco is the king at getting away with this shit.
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CISCO ORACLE (Score:2)
Cisco has become Oracle.
Over priced licence hungry vultures.
The likes of Ubiquiti and pfSense are now eating their SME market, and Ubiquiti are now releasing higher end models that will start eating into the 1000+ user market.
A bit Like Postgre v Oracle they will pump their locked in large enterprise customers for more $$ to make up for losses in SME.
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Same here (Score:2)
This is an industry wide issue.
An org I worked with was in the market for JUST a WAF, and spent an entire hour on a sales call with a vendor who basically never mentioned it, instead only talked about all their other offerings. For reference, this call was scheduled to be a technical engineering call for their WAF product.
Not actually how enterprise ELA agreements work (Score:2)
This article does not properly explain how ELA agreements work in practice. ELA agreements do not force you to "buy software you don't use".
Here is how an ELA agreement actually works:
- Software vendor like Cisco/Microsoft has a huge catalog of software
- Customer needs to buy a huge amount of software and wants the best discount possible
- Software vendor says "here is our catalog, if you commit to spending $500M over 5 years, we give you 50% off list, if you commit to spending $1B over 5 years, we will give
Oligopolies like friggen bundles (Score:2)
Bundling is how oligopolies wipe out competition: they give a bundled deal that's hard to refuse (on paper), so there's little incentive to mix and match the best tech from different companies. But in the end it's often wasteful and harms smaller competition because you buy crap you don't need and the stuff you do need you don't shop for best-of-breed because you got the "good enough" with the bundle.
It's why our org is stuck with MS-Teams. What a pile of shit that thing is. It would completely fail if it h
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I switched away from the web version because certain features didn't work on it. Maybe MS got around to fixing them; I'll give it a try, thanks. Usually the desktop version of something is richer, not crippled, as in modal.
Just Say No to Cisco anything if you can. (Score:2)
The problem with Cisco UC (Score:2)