It's so much easier for Cisco to compete with HP than it is for HP to compete with Cisco. HP is competitive in access-layer switching and that's about it. No pr

It's so much easier for Cisco to compete with HP than it is for HP to compete with Cisco. HP is competitive in access-layer switching and that's about it. No presence in big iron carrier class core gear, wireless, VOIP, security/IDS, CPE devices such as cable modems & IP set top boxes, infrastructure, SOHO consumer gear, etc. Meanwhile Cisco just has to slap together an X86 server, write some management software, and they've at least got a complete product line to compete with HP. I imagine HP is grabbing 3COM to make a push towards SOHO/consumer markets because 3COM isn't relevant in any of those above listed markets either for the most part. Cisco is more worried about Juniper, Brocade, Arris, etc. They are aggressively competing with Cisco in a lot of important markets. Cisco can offer a 40-50% discount and still be unable to compete with some of these companies on pricing. Unless you really need some screwball exotic feature set that Cisco offers you can find feature/performance parity easily. Interoperability between vendors is much better these days so there's less vendor lock-in and more acceptable of mixed networks. You might use Cisco in the core but go elsewhere for almost everything else.