Demythologizing思科

Kevin Jennings

November 13, 2015

I recently returned to the high technology industry after a nine year detour into the world of philanthropy.

Prior to 2006, I had enjoyed a career of over 20 years in the world of making computers talk to one another. It is to this world that I returned a few months ago, and I found that some things had changed while many things were incredibly similar to how they were a decade ago. 

这是我发现的最惊人的事情, that remarkably had not changed at all was the total stranglehold that one vendor has on the networking infrastructure marketplace. 当然，这个供应商就是思科系统公司. 我一直在问自己, how can it be, 在这样一个成熟的市场, 一家公司可以拥有如此大的影响力, to the tune of commanding a 70 to 80% market share? Even more astounding is the fact that it is the company whose wares are universally acknowledged to be far-and-away the most expensive in the industry. I cannot think of a single other market sector where this is the case. 那么，为什么是这样呢?

宗教的力量

The answer is: religion—never underestimate the power of well-crafted, carefully and ubiquitously disseminated mythology. 我必须给公司应得的回报. Cisco has masterfully crafted a multi-faceted mythology surrounding its company and its products, 这个神话的追随者很多. 别误会我. The mythology is not that Cisco is a great company with very good products. 这些都不是神话. 事实上，它们是绝对正确的. 

The 神话在别处, and consists of a host of propositions about Cisco and its products and about other companies and their products, finely tuned and promulgated by Cisco over the years, that, if examined from a truly open and unbiased perspective, are simply not true. It is this web of myths that leads companies to routinely overpay for Cisco products when on the face of it they do not merit such deference. It is this package of propositions that time and again leads intelligent and otherwise responsible parties at all levels and in a variety of roles of organizations to gladly shell out whatever premium Cisco has mandated that it will charge them for its products without ever genuinely even considering the viable alternatives available to them.

Cisco has not succeeded in pulling this off on its own. Its massive host of followers have bought into the myth, 正如业内人士所说, 喝了冷饮,” without which Cisco would have long ago been rendered just one among many companies vying for their place in the networking infrastructure space, perhaps commanding 15 or 20% market share rather than the lion’s share of the pie, and selling its products at a fair and respectable price point rather than at the stratospheric prices that they all too often command. That the market has bought into the myth and has allowed Cisco to prosper, 不仅仅是以竞争对手的损失为代价, but at the expense of the pocket books of its customers, 需要许多人的共谋, many religious zealots singing in the Cisco choir.

审视思科神话

This series will seek to examine the elements of the Cisco mythology, and to evaluate them one by one to see if they stand up under scrutiny or instead merit being debunked. We’ll cover erroneous notions such as “Nobody ever got fired for buying Cisco,” “Cisco provides the Lowest Total Cost of Ownership,” “My people are all trained on Cisco so we can’t use anything else,” and more. 第一个流言, however, and the foundation of all the other myths when one gets right down to it, is the following, which will be covered in the next installment: “Cisco is the only safe choice.”

Stay tuned…