> > Sorry to be so pessimistic. NRF - got anything to add? Oh, I got lots to add. But let me try to keep it short by couching things in the following bullet points:
*If you want money, somebody has to be ultimately paying. Money in, money out. Cisco is not a mint. No vendor is a mint. Cisco can only earn money sustainably if their customers are making money. And not just making money, but making money by using Cisco gear. You can only get money out if there is money coming in. Is that really happening? Let me explain. Let's look at the Internet. Many studies have shown a boom in Internet usage. A boom in traffic. A boom in users. A boom in time spent on the Internet. In all categories there is a boom, except for the one category that matters - a boom in profits. How many dotcoms actually make money? Few, very few. How many service-providers actually make profit from providing Internet access? Again, few, very few. If you tally the aggregate of all the profit and losses derived from Internet operations, you will see that the Internet has been nothing but a financial debacle of the first order. A business model where you, as a vendor, are making record profits while many of your customers are unprofitable is a business model that is unsustainable. True, Cisco is not just all about the Internet. So let's look at Cisco's bread-and-butter - the enterprise customer. Enterprises will continue to invest in their network only to the degree that it is profitable to do so. Has Cisco, or any other networking vendor, been able to demonstrate a solid ROI from upgrading the network? In many cases, no. Companies don't just build out networks 'for fun', they do so because there is a clear business reason to do so. What are these reasons? Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that there are no good reasons to do a network buildout. Indeed there are often many good reasons. But my point is that we need engineers who are not only technically strong, but can also articulate a strong business case as to why money should be spent. In short, we engineers need to know more about the business and financial side of things. *How many people really care about the network? By that, I mean how many regular (non-technical) people really care about a network at all? Are they going to be dazzled with mentions of BGP and VoIP and all that crap? Hardly. Regular people care about the services that a network can provide. It is the services that people are willing to pay for, not the network itself. But that begs the question - are there really all these jazzy services out there that regular people are willing to pay for? Before you answer, you may wish to consider the following snippet from the Hart-Winston study: "The bottom line is that among people who are most likely to subscribe to high-speed Internet access, the obstacles are price and lack of appeal," said Hart, CEO of Hart Research. "Forty-eight percent have no interest regardless of price and another 21 percent are willing to pay at most $20 per month. If you cannot win over the people who are currently using the Internet, consumer acceptance of high-speed access will be slow and limited...Findings about consumer interest in subscribing to high-speed service also apply to those who use it at work, the poll found, indicating that even those exposed to the service find little reason to subscribe at home" http://www.comptel.org/press/nov29_2001_voices.html Then of course there was that incident in Oregon where a whole town was offered free broadband for a year, and only half the households signed up (can't find the article unfortunately, but you may wish to talk to Steven Ridder if you want to see it). The point is, at this time, very few regular people actually care about the Internet because there are no truly compelling services out there, and especially not much that people are willing to pay serious money for. * Cisco isn't going anywhere. All the nasty invective aside, the fact is that Cisco holds more of a premier position in the industry than perhaps at any other time. They got billions of dollars in the bank, and very importantly, no debt. The disaster of the service-provider market was something of a godsend to Cisco in the sense that it has crushed its competitors like Nortel and Lucent. Just a few years ago there was talk of how Cisco was going to have its lunch eaten by those Nor/cent because of their long-standing close relationships with service-providers. You don't hear that kind of talk anymore. The fact is, Cisco has basically been handed another few years for which it can develop a strong service-provider initiative (no, Stratacom didn't really work out, and the GSR is a point product, it's not an initiative). *The best move may be not to play. Cisco and networking in general most likely has its glory days behind it. Things will probably never be as good as they were. Cisco will probably never reach a market cap of $550 billion for many years and will probably never see a growth rate of 60% ever again. This extends to us engineers. We will almost certainly never have it as good as 1999 ever again. Network engineers will most likely have to combine their networking skills with other talents if they want to remain employable. For example, they will probably need strong business skills. Or strong app skills (to understand the services that actually generate the revenue that is needed for increased network spending). Things like that. Message Posted at: http://www.groupstudy.com/form/read.php?f=7&i=55048&t=54957 -------------------------------------------------- FAQ, list archives, and subscription info: http://www.groupstudy.com/list/cisco.html Report misconduct and Nondisclosure violations to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
