Seriously…. It’s getting near impossible to sell switching / compute to my customers. Little tiny deals for keeping legacy stuff working. They are all going AWS for everything new. We might as well pack it in.
20 replies (most recent on top)
Cisco is great at making "Me too!" products.
“I heard today that Cisco has a new cloud strategy. It is new UCS x86 server boxes, Catalyst 9K switches, and Cat. 8K routers.”
- Absolutely hilarious…because it’s true.
“I have to completely agree that the market change has set sail once and for all and Cisco is no longer driving the boat.”
Amen to the that!
AWS does have some amazing products. It is sort of sad because they are of mostly extremely easy to integrate into existing networks. Cisco missed the boat on so much of the basic design AWS overall use-case in general. Their focus is integration simplification and ease of onboarding new features. Cisco could have been the current AWS if they focused and executed a decade ago. It just feels too late now. I was LR'd but have remained a big Cisco advocate, but having lived through migration of many network functions to AWS first-hand at my new job since leaving, I have to completely agree that the market change has set sail once and for all and Cisco is no longer driving the boat.
Lol, cisco is over
I heard today that Cisco has a new cloud strategy. It is new UCS x86 server boxes, Catalyst 9K switches, and Cat. 8K routers.
That sucking sound you hear is AWS not only taking the meat of our customer’s spend, but the poaching of any decent SE. We are losing talented field engineers at an astonishing rate. The college grads replacing them are inexperienced - no fault of their own. Their primary skill is reciting a script. And no wonder why. Such a better environment for motivated people at Amazon.
I see the same in my accounts. AWS, Azure, GCP are taking business that 10 years ago would have meant huge DC deals for Cisco. Cisco’s DC biz isn’t dead. But the drag from the cloud cannot be ignored. It will be a slow death. Who wants to stick around for that!! I along with many of my colleagues will jump as soon as possible.
Since I was LR'd, migrating customer on-premise server infrastructure to AWS has basically been my job. It is amazing how streamlined and repetitive the process has gotten in three years.
It is sad in a way in that I was around at Cisco for all the "____* cloud as a service" (*choose a variety of marketing names) were put out to market and never went anywhere.
AWS does indeed have some amazing onboarding support also, sad to say that because Cisco TAC was the benchmark in early 2000s. What happened?
It will be a long slow decline. I hope Cisco somehow finds a saving technology grace but every month since my leaving, it doesn't seem that way. The model now is cheap simple switches to run what is left over on premise that still needs to run what is left after most of the datacenter is moved to AWS.
AWS is creating the bulk of Amazon profits and is growing like crazy, so what are you talking about ?
AWS is going to have a hard time competing in the mid future. For starters, it's still bundled with its parent company Amazon which has arguably already become too big. So it will likely split, at which point AWS will have to be profitable. Margins in the cloud business are rumored to be extremely low, so that won't be simple. Next to that, GCP is making a strong come back, and Azure offers far more enterprise-friendly applications and migration features out of the box for customers already using MSFT products.
As a customer, you cannot get Cisco AMs to follow up customer's requests unless they are multi million dollar deals. AWS however, have no shortage of resources to help from AM to Pre- Sales architects to discuss designs etc
CxO's are leaving b/c of the power being given to Maria and her unconscionable spending in Customer Success. We try to be a SW company, but we are an infrastructure company where sh-t needs to work w/each other. She doesn't get that and her V2MoM is a glaring example of what's wrong.
AWS is kissing us?
I heard the ELT say Cisco is the leader in Cloud. What are you worried about?
And the ELT says we're the #1 place to work at too. Or when the ELT said that they were shifting resources as part of the "Limited Restructuring" to "focus" on our top business priorities. Then a few years later, they have another LR and focus on our top business priorities, which are not the same priorities of just a year or two prior.
I don't put a lot of faith in what the ELT has to say.
Chuck just mentioned that our CCO is leaving. We lost our CFO late last year. When CxO's start abandoning ship, you know things are getting pretty bad.
The original post has a point, but a bit exaggerated. My perspective is that of someone who left Cisco for AWS. At the end of the day, DC switch ports will decrease as more applications (and future workloads turn cloud native). Enterprise switching is still there. However this on-prem DNA Center cr-p needs to be put in a cloud like yesterday.
I agree on the employee attrition. Cisco is having a hard time convincing employees that the future is bright. Meanwhile, cloud providers and SaaS providers are paying big bucks for experienced talent. 2020 was all about a safe place to be during the pandemic. 2021 is all about making better career moves.
AWS has hired and continues to poach any remaining talent left at Cisco. I know 3 more TSA's about to make the move to AWS. Attrition is out of control at cisco but all self inflected. Screwing everyone with the pay and commissions was begging for everyone to leave.
I heard the ELT say Cisco is the leader in Cloud. What are you worried about?
How is the market looking for the need for campus networking?
yeah that's it...all dc is going to AWS. yep....