At one of our Getting to Gigabit Town Meetings, a speaker wondered aloud about the gap in enthusiasm between vendors and customers regarding Layer 3 switching. Rivals see Layer 3 switching as a way to ravage Cisco's high router margins and drive a wedge between Cisco and corporate customers. But customers are more reserved. They're asking themselves whether it's worth embracing the new products now, or wait for Cisco to match what rivals offer.
Cisco thinks it has.
While CEO John Chambers likes to claim that the company will never get arrogant, that his experiences at IBM and Wang taught him the dangers of believing your own PR, he seems to have forgotten that lesson of late. In speeches, he routinely discounts 3Com, Cabletron, Bay and others, touting Cisco's vastly higher market capitalization and research and development spending. He says Cisco has locked up the industry's top strategic partners. With its superior skill at acquisitions, Cisco can quickly fill whatever gaps may open up in its product line. It's not to say we couldn't mess it up, but we're probably the only one in the industry that really controls our destiny in this Internet era.