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I'm a bit biased here since I work doing development mostly aimed at a competitor of Cisco in the Unified Communications space, but after seeing a few presentat

by mdip 10y ago

I'm a bit biased here since I work doing development mostly aimed at a competitor of Cisco in the Unified Communications space, but after seeing a few presentations by Rowan Trollope at Enterprise Connect, I have the feeling all is not well at Cisco and this article seems to echo that. At EC, I really felt like they were on the defense trying to market a product that's trying to be "cool like Slack" while chiding enterprise customers for being uncool and wanting things like control over upgrade roll-outs and being interested in "fake clouds"[1]. Their presentation of this new product had the feeling of an angry old man trying to sell mood rings to hipsters. The attitude of the presenters bordered on insulting and I was reminded of a meeting with Cisco guys with a very similar attitude, almost decade ago, when my previous employer was trying to re-instate maintenance on our Cisco phone infrastructure. At the time, we were looking to either get maintenance or replace it with something else (Office Communications Server 2008 -- which hadn't been released yet, but which Microsoft was actively courting us to become a tester of with very good financial terms associated). The rep sarcastically said "What are you going to do, switch to Asterisk or LCS?"[2]. My recollection of parts of this is hazy, but IIRC, they weren't willing to budge on price and even found places that we had miscalculated the cost we already couldn't pay, resulting in a higher cost. In 15 years of dealing with vendor reps, I've never had a call that even came close to that one. I fielded two different calls within an hour of that meeting's end with both people saying the Cisco guys were "arrogant DICKS". Within two years my previous employer ripped out all of our Cisco IP-PBX related devices, moved to OCS 2007 and the company has stayed with the Microsoft Solution of Various Names since. If the vendor reps were any indication, Cisco didn't believe there would ever be competition for their product, and had a very dim view of Microsoft (still seem to, today). Their new product (who's name escapes me) seems to be the direction they want to go, but they're late, and aren't as good as the competition. [1] This was a phrase the Cisco folks seemed really attached to and I kept thinking that the one feature you want in a collaboration/"phone" system is stability. And the "fake clouds" were things like on-prem/cloud deployment options available from Microsoft and policies that embraced limited backward compatibility and controlled update roll-out. For me, the phrase became "fake clouds don't rain" (or at least when they do, you have some control over it). [2] This is paraphrased, but not much. Microsoft had courted us at the time and we were involved in pre-release for OCS. We didn't actually migrate to LCS, we migrated to OCS while participating in the OCS R2 TAP. They provided us with people on-site that basically designed and helped us roll the solution out at no charge (they were supposed to be resources for the TAP program but they assisted with everything).

cturner 10y ago
"If the vendor reps were any indication, Cisco didn't believe there would ever be competition for their product" Familiar feeling. The explanation: there is no long-term horizon. All they care about is near-term bonus, and things that position them personally. Companies with clearly-defined leading products are under permanent risk of being hijacked by sociopaths. Engineers are intelligent, but we are focused on hard problems, and we are typically invested in the platform which limits our ability to manoeuvre. The sociopaths have nothing better to do than spend all their day consolidating position, and they don't care if they have to destroy the mountain in order to take it. (Once a company has been pillaged, they can just go somewhere else and do it again.) As an engineer, you will fight to kill this thing. But once you see it has succeeded in taking root, immediately try to get clear of it. I don't think this gets enough emphasis in our circles - we need a short phrase that captures the transition point. I've just read your blog and suggest "bed bugs".
- deleted 10y ago
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- mdip 10y ago
  Agreed. I think the other part of it is organizational blindness, as well. They reacted to OCS in the same manner that Microsoft reacted to the iPhone. They were the established player with a mature platform and here came along a service that did things radically different and lacked, what they perceived, as the major features that customers in that space were looking for so they simply laughed at the product. Companies certainly didn't flock to it like people flocked to the iPhone (a trick I think only Apple can pull off), but by comparison, Cisco's offering provided a far less integrated experience at a greater cost and once those back-end features got worked out (or were no longer relevant), they had a surprise competitor with (at the time[1]) a much lower price. Couple that with the fact that people are far more comfortable with making video/voice calls from a PC due to Skype (consumer) and the idea of getting rid of your desk phone[2] and taking it with you on your laptop for all of your "business phone needs" isn't so radical anymore. [1] At the time, there wasn't even a comparison. It took far fewer servers, cheap (by comparison) licensing that gave you dial-in conferencing for the cost of the server and the call's cost (no additional per-minute surcharge for the privilege of using a bridge). I haven't priced a Cisco equivalent in a while so that may all be different, today. [2] You can still have a phone with Skype for Business (and they're great phones from what I've seen) and many companies still pop those phones on desks. I worked at Global Crossing when we switched, though, and we required a departmental waiver to get a physical phone (to save money). People did get decent, certified, headsets, but we made the switch the way people take band-aids off and there was a lot of bleeding in the first couple of months. It died down once people got used to it and within a half-year, meeting rooms went empty in favor of calls with desktop sharing (one can multitask and no need to walk down the hall carrying your laptop). Laziness always wins. :o)

by mdip 10y ago

cturner 10y ago

"If the vendor reps were any indication, Cisco didn't believe there would ever be competition for their product" Familiar feeling. The explanation: there is no long-term horizon. All they care about is near-term bonus, and things that position them personally. Companies with clearly-defined leading products are under permanent risk of being hijacked by sociopaths. Engineers are intelligent, but we are focused on hard problems, and we are typically invested in the platform which limits our ability to manoeuvre. The sociopaths have nothing better to do than spend all their day consolidating position, and they don't care if they have to destroy the mountain in order to take it. (Once a company has been pillaged, they can just go somewhere else and do it again.) As an engineer, you will fight to kill this thing. But once you see it has succeeded in taking root, immediately try to get clear of it. I don't think this gets enough emphasis in our circles - we need a short phrase that captures the transition point. I've just read your blog and suggest "bed bugs".

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
mdip 10y ago
Agreed. I think the other part of it is organizational blindness, as well. They reacted to OCS in the same manner that Microsoft reacted to the iPhone. They were the established player with a mature platform and here came along a service that did things radically different and lacked, what they perceived, as the major features that customers in that space were looking for so they simply laughed at the product. Companies certainly didn't flock to it like people flocked to the iPhone (a trick I think only Apple can pull off), but by comparison, Cisco's offering provided a far less integrated experience at a greater cost and once those back-end features got worked out (or were no longer relevant), they had a surprise competitor with (at the time[1]) a much lower price. Couple that with the fact that people are far more comfortable with making video/voice calls from a PC due to Skype (consumer) and the idea of getting rid of your desk phone[2] and taking it with you on your laptop for all of your "business phone needs" isn't so radical anymore. [1] At the time, there wasn't even a comparison. It took far fewer servers, cheap (by comparison) licensing that gave you dial-in conferencing for the cost of the server and the call's cost (no additional per-minute surcharge for the privilege of using a bridge). I haven't priced a Cisco equivalent in a while so that may all be different, today. [2] You can still have a phone with Skype for Business (and they're great phones from what I've seen) and many companies still pop those phones on desks. I worked at Global Crossing when we switched, though, and we required a departmental waiver to get a physical phone (to save money). People did get decent, certified, headsets, but we made the switch the way people take band-aids off and there was a lot of bleeding in the first couple of months. It died down once people got used to it and within a half-year, meeting rooms went empty in favor of calls with desktop sharing (one can multitask and no need to walk down the hall carrying your laptop). Laziness always wins. :o)