Although Cisco is the obvious 600lb Gorilla in the room, one manufacturer was not mentioned that I think deserves to be is Alcatel-Lucent. Brad Reese recently posted a story on networkworld.com regarding the rise of AL to #2 in the SP market. http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/57868.

Additionally, I think if HP does a better job of marketing, they could take a substantial bite out of Cisco’s market share on the enterprise market side.

Let me start by agreeing with you and stat the obvious. Of course Cisco market share is #1, and they are the 10K pound gorilla. They took this spot form IBM 12 years back by being innovative, buying the market with cheap promotions, and finally training everyone on IOS at birth. Today, the innovation surrounding networking is gone, and the only way they can grow is to look into other areas of business. The problem is, by taking this approach, they have taken their eye of the ball when it comes to their core business. If you think that Cisco still builds the best networking gear, innovative gear, or integrated solutions, then you need to get out more! Just because it has the Cisco name on it doesn’t mean that it all fluidly works together.

Cisco used to the build good gear, when it was competing against Bay Networks 3Com, Riverstone, etc.., Now a days they just rehash their 10 year old technologies by slapping an E on the end, or putting in a little faster processor. Oh wait there is the new ASR 1K, which is supposed to be the best thing out there. Ever checked the blogs on that box. Wow, what a treat it is. COME ON PMC or Brodcom, help them out here.

The best look into the old innovative Cisco is their approach with UC or their new UCS platform. I am guessing that the Gen 1 UCS will sell very well, but will then be ripped out almost as much as their Gen 1 Avvid gear was. I do believe that by Gen 2 they will figure it out and most likely will start to give IBM, HP, and Dell a run for thier money.

This old innovative approach to UC and the Server market may lead them to dominate these market segments, but not without deteriorating their networking dominance. All good things eventually comes to an end, and I feel that their dominance will definitely be broken over the next few years by one, if not a combination of a couple, of the competitors you mention.

You know a company has hit it’s peak when the old IBM & AT&T saying applies. The saying I am referring to is, “You will never get fired for buying Cisco.”

The ironic thing is that people who want to take advantage of the best technology, tend not to buy Cisco. They definitely consider it in their evaluation, but they are buying less and less. For example, the countless Web 2.0 companies you write about on your blog tend to buy every other piece of gear you mention but new Cisco gear. There are always exceptions to the rule, but these are the folks you are smart about how they spend. They understand that there is better gear out there that lends them a better ROI, scalability, and resiliency. The days of the Monolithic IOS is over.

Many of you mention HP… Great for a small corporate networks, but how many large data center builds do you see them in? If their gear was as so great, then why don’t you see them in production DC environments of companies like Facebook, Google, Salesforece, BofA, etc…

Regardless, I typically enjoy reading this Blog, but today, after this hogwash, I will be more cautious about what I end to believe.

Next time, please take the time to read more about the competition you mention, and take finance 101 class to understand that Cisco’s growth in the networking business is flattening out compared to previous years. In comparison, their competitors are growing at a much faster rate. Cisco still is number one, but with HP in 2, and many others gaining fast, I am sure we will see this change in the next few years!

HPS problem is their marketing. Not the hardware itself.