This seems like a holdover from the old days of just selling routers and switches. Specialist engineers got added for each AT, eventually even EN itself. So what is the purpose of portfolio engineers?
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I do not even use the TSAs for Collaboration, Security and Data Center technologies. Except for a few good ones. their knowledge base level is terrible. Not only I know the account, the customers' environments and contact, I know the roadmap information intimately and troubleshoot issues better than most of them. The TSAs just keep up with almost the latest and give the same content as the SEVT, but lack the technical skill to troubleshoot or the intimacy to close the business. By the way, what happen to the level of quality of TAC CSEs these days?
SEs are expected to be poor versions of lots of things - AMs, TAMs, customer service, etc. very little emphasis on actual pre sales engineering.
Our product portfolio is a commodity. Although the relationships and government contracts are extremely lucrative.
Because the overall Cisco product portfolio is now a commodity. If you are a customer and want innovation, it's easier and more cost effective to completely switch vendors rather than rely on an increasingly marginal and unengaged lifecycle support model.
Congratulations Executive Team, you get to ride this cash cow until its back finally breaks. Well done.
That just tells you how desperate Csco now is if these once prized AMs, SAs and SEs are in chopping blocks. No surpise though, just really tough to sell Csco solutions nowadays. Competitions simply catched up. Just try pitching Zero Trust, what a nightmare mess of overlapping, convoluted products. And still acquiring more
@htg+1mzc8HOt Cutting the do nothing AMs is the wiser move.
Unfortunately, with the Street's margin expectations of Cisco, Cisco really can't afford their current presales costs if they want the stock price to stay where it's at.
Cisco could afford having the highest presales costs in the market when they were growing.
@iis+1mzc8HOt They can afford it they just don’t want to.
Cisco has been trying to get rid of the SEs since Wim Elfrink's dreams of charging customers for all of the SE services that Cisco provided. Of course, customers laughed at that and asked when Cisco was going to deliver products that worked correctly out of the box.
Cisco is now between a rock and hard place because they simply can't afford the presales cost of the SEs, and they can't get customers up and running without free SE services.
Doh!
It really depends on the customer, too. MANY are small and/or unsophisticated, so should be covered by partners. But partners are even worse.
@iqi+1mzc8HOt You’re imagining the SE of twenty years ago. The quality has gone down (the good ones left for higher pay and fewer problems elsewhere), and they are expected to cover a gigantic portfolio.
It will be the death of Cisco if account SE/SA role gets canned. “Leaders” at Cisco who make these descisions are completely out of touch. Many customers tell me openly that the SE is major reason they put up with all the BS from Cisco - cost/TAC/licensing/complexity. Take the SE away and no longer any need to remain with Cisco.
The idea is the AMs aren’t good enough to do their job so there’s an SA there to have a broader view across the portfolio. Specialists just focus on what they sell and ignore opportunities on the periphery. Marketing also likes to pretend Cisco on Cisco is “better together”. But as has been pointed out the portfolio is too big and convoluted for a single generalist to cover.
Who else is going to handle all the TAC and licensing issues?
@jbn+1mzc8HOt Cisco pays SEs well below industry average but has many more than average.
SAs are going to C2E in FY24. The cost of pre-sales engineering is significantly more than the industry average. Pay for those in C2E is 30% less than the industry average. Mass exodus of SAs. Don’t wait too long as competitor openings are going to go quick with Cisco SA.
There won’t be any for long except on the very largest customers to be quarter backs. They are getting specialized because it’s too many products to know.