The sad fact for customers is that Cisco has been degrading the value they deliver to customers for 20 years. In the early days, SEs worked closely with the Development Engineers to ensure technology was being deployed appropriately. Cisco knew it had to make customers successful because they were the unknown in the industry.
Once Chambers and Justice decided that Cisco was the incumbent within the majority of their top customer accounts, the strategy switched to maximizing Cisco wallet share within a customer. At that point, quality and customer success became a secondary concern. Since then, given the pressure on margins, Cisco is being forced to lower their cost of sales.
It's going to be interesting to see how a company that worships complexity and has used it to win so much business agains the competition will execute in a the new environment where simplicity and ease of use will be required given that the level of technical support for customers is going nowhere but down.
Perfectly said, @1oco+1dY1VTSA.