破除思科的神话(四):没有人因为购买思科而被解雇

Kevin Jennings

giugno 03, 2016

但这就是故事的结局吗?

好吧，我一开始就承认. I don’t know of an instance in which a person got canned because they purchased products made by Cisco Systems. 但这就是故事的结局吗? It used to be said decades ago that, “Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM.” This was a common statement because IBM essentially ruled the world of computing—to an extent even greater than Cisco rules the world of networking today—and it was perceived that, at the very least, going with IBM meant that one was safe from criticism whatever the outcome of the implementation. Note that then, with IBM, and today with Cisco, it never meant that the system would be trouble free. Any honest person who has spent time with networking infrastructure equipment knows that it is never perfect. Release notes from any manufacturer pointing out the known bugs in the system bear this out for all to see, 思科也和其他人一样无法幸免.

那么，为什么上面的说法是一个神话? 这完全取决于一个人如何看待这件事. Granted, there is a measure of built in shielding that one inherits by choosing to use the market share leader in any type of solution. If troubles occur, it is less likely that management will immediately look to the manufacturer of the networking gear to point the finger when it bears a famous name like Cisco Systems. And it is highly unlikely that the decision maker who chose to use Cisco will be called on the carpet for betting on a company whose products are chosen more often than any other. 那么，这种说法又怎么会是一个神话呢?

也许在某些情况下，他们应该这样做

思科的产品总体上运行良好. The commonly accepted fallacy is that the products from other leading manufacturers in the industry do not. 这是问题的核心. While it cannot be said that network switching is a pure commodity industry, 因为不同的产品之间存在一些真正的差异, there is nonetheless a lot more that is similar about the products from Cisco and the leading players than there is that is different. 我们的产品都是基于一个定义的, limited set of silicon that bears limited differentiation between vendors. As a result, perhaps there are cases where someone should have been fired for buying Cisco—a lot of them, in fact! The justification for purchasing Cisco equipment for the vast majority of circumstances in which it is purchased 忽略了价值的根本问题. I would grant all day long that Cisco is the right choice if it really is the only solution that will perform the tasks at hand. 然而，事实是，这种情况几乎从来没有发生过. 在阿尔卡特朗讯企业公司, we very rarely encounter a situation in which our products will not perform a comparable job to Cisco’s, 在某些情况下，他们实际上表现得更好. Why, then, 在其他方面很聪明的人通常只花20%吗, 50%, or, believe it or not, 3X or 5X as much to purchase Cisco versus our equipment or that from another networking infrastructure vendor? If both do an adequate or rather an admirable job as a solution for the requirements, what are we to say of the person who chose Cisco and paid twice what they could have and should have paid? Is it, “Great job, you’re covered and there is no chance anyone is going to fire you. Brilliant move!” Or, should it rather be, “在其他条件相同的情况下, 你选择思科真是太好了, 市场份额的领先者, 并非所有其他事物都是平等的. 解决方案本身都足以满足我们的需要, but you paid twice what you needed to and squandered the company’s resources. You deserve to be fired!”

How About: “Nobody Ever Got Hired for Buying Cisco”

 我认为更准确的说法是, 这适用于太多现实世界的例子, 这句话是:“从来没有人得到过 hired for buying Cisco.” What? You heard me. Purchasing Cisco in the vast majority of cases means that the customer has massively overpaid for what they are receiving. 这条规则的例外是相对罕见的, truly competitive situations in which Cisco deigns to lower itself to actually offer a price competitive solution, 哪些是罕见的. Anyway, there are very few companies which when buying products are sophisticated enough to engineer an acquisition to ensure that Cisco is competitive, 因为这样做意味着 they actually are willing to purchase an alternative if Cisco chooses not to be. Routinely, Cisco offers its equipment at a premium that ranges from 20% to 30% more than our solutions, to as much as 5X what we are charging for our comparable equipment which otherwise satisfies the requirements of the project. 

Look at it this way. If, on a $3M Cisco acquisition the customer could have implemented an Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise solution for say $2.100万美元，客户额外支付的90万美元怎么办? 直接影响到思科的利润. It is $900K that is in Cisco’s pocket rather than in the customer’s pocket where it belongs. 用那90万美元可以雇佣多少人? I guess that it could be said that those whom the company couldn’t hire because it chose to overpay for Cisco equipment 已经因此被先发制人地解雇了吗.

也许确实有人因为收购思科而被“解雇”了. Maybe it happens every day. Maybe your company has in effect fired people by choosing to overspend on Cisco.

Cisco is fond of saying that its products may be a little more expensive than other companies’ wares, 但考虑到TCO(总拥有成本)，它就胜出了。. Really?在下一部分中，我们将解决“思科在TCO方面领先”的神话.”