By Ian Yates
10 April 2008 06:14AM
Tags: ciscopartner08 | cisco

So, the Mexican networking company has realised there’s not much future in selling black boxes and now wants to be a ‘software as a service’ provider. Uhuh. Well, the market for Ethernet switching has certainly been eaten out from underneath the network majors as vendors such as Netgear offer “lifetime warranty”.

Oh, and by the way, they really mean it – a client fried a Netgear router by “user error” and they still replaced it without question next day at no charge. Stick that in your overpriced brand-name network box.

Anyway, Cisco has decided it is a software company, which in essence is actually true, since without the software it’s black boxes wouldn’t do any routing or switching. But their opportunity for platforms on which to run their software are a tad limited – to their own black boxes. In order to become a truly global supplier of SaaS, Cisco has decided to involve its partner resellers. Uhuh. “We’ve got no idea how to convince people to give us money for a Web 2.0 rental. You guys got a clue?”

This had better be a good pitch. If you’ve been a loyal brand-name networking kit vendor you’re already bleeding from the inroads being made by the corner milk bar selling “consumer: and “SOHO” networks. Of course, if your stock in trade was up-market Cisco kit then you’re probably already selling their low-rent offerings from Linksys but that still leaves a lot of vulnerability to the D-Link and Netgear upstarts.

Will SaaS by Cisco really make the difference? Do your customers want to rent Web 2.0 or do they just need a 16-port Ethernet switch they can afford?