From: pcorless@cisco.com (Peter Corless)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.sys.cisco
Subject: Re: Any New Products from Cisco
Date: 12 Nov 1992 05:58:24 GMT
Organization: Computer Science Lab, SRI International
Distribution: world
Reply-To: pcorless@cisco.com (Peter Corless)
NNTP-Posting-Host: corless-mac.cisco.com

In response to post:
From: dyer@spdcc.com (Steve Dyer)
Subject: Re: Any New Products from Cisco

> Ha!  Unless you were interested in SNA and "APPI" you wouldn't have found
> out anything about new products from Cisco. Frankly, as a source of
new product information (as opposed to a schmoozing booth for a bunch
of suits) the Cisco booth at Interop really sucked...

(Rest of post deleted for brevity; it continued along same vein.)

Steve,

I apologize for the negative impression you had of our booth. Other customers 
told me they greatly enjoyed our booth and seminars. Still, it's important to
listen to *all* of our customer feedback. Therefore, I forwarded your
comments along to raise internal visibility for some of your issues.

If you have any questions that weren't answered at the show, send them to me.
I'll either answer them personally, or forward them to someone more qualified.

Let me give a brief impression for you, and others interested (such as CH
Cheng, who made the initial inquiry), about how we organized ourselves at
Interop.

It's quite true that we had many demonstrations and seminars organized around
our SNA and APPI technologies. Customer demand for specifics on our recent
anouncements was very high!

We also had a demonstration area for our new Cisco 4000, 3000 and 500-CS
series products. The 4000 is a 3-slot chassis; the 3000 is a new 2-port
router (the "Son of IGS", if you will); and the 500-CS is a new 8- or 16-port
communications server. Another demonstration focused on the new CiscoWorks 
router management package, which operates under SunNet Manager. Yet another
showed off performance of our new 4-port cBus Token Ring card. The last focus
area was for a technology demonstration of IBM ESCON/FDDI/ATM connectivity
we ran in cooperation with IBM.

We tried to staff the booth with as many knowedgeable and diverse people as
we could... product managers, field engineers, networking consultants,
sales representatives and customer service personnel. That way, we hoped to
be able to answer any questions you had, from pricing to performance testing.

Still, customer interest was enormous! Even with all of the staff we brought
along, we were often packed five people deep around our demos. We gave
demonstrations to hundreds of people at the booth, and directed dozens more
to our in-depth seminars. There was literally no room in the booth to stack
all of the volumes of information customers asked for, so we took imprints of
their badges or business cards to send them literature after the show. (In
some cases, though, I forwarded people who wanted information ASAP to our
Customer Service 800#, so they could get literature faxed same day to their
offices or hotels!)

Our technical staff was incredibly busy. We had fold-out erasable white boards
that were being constantly grafittied with network diagrams, numbers and
acronyms. We staffed demos in shifts. Sometimes, more technical people ran
them; other times, more sales-oriented personnel took over. It seems that you
hit the demo when our staff person wasn't technical enough to keep up with
you.

Again, I apologize for any negative impression. If you return to Interop next
year, I hope you receive a much more genial and informative welcome. To you
and everyone else who dropped by at Interop, thank you very much for your
time and interest! I remain as always... At your service!

Sincerely,

-Peter Corless.
 Cisco Customer Service
 US Federal Business Representative
 ----------------------------------
 e-mail: pcorless@cisco.com
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Newsgroups: comp.dcom.sys.cisco