Aggressiveness and discipline are the qualities that have made Cisco so successful. Instead of pulling back from Asia during the economic turmoil, for example, Cisco tripled its payroll there, excluding Japan. Bodies on the street give Cisco the chance to take market share. The enterprise still accounts for half of Cisco's revenue, but selling to service providers is the fuel in Cisco's business, and the GSR 12000 high-speed router is the fuel. The company says it has sold more than 1,000 GSR 12000s through late fall.
Chambers likes to boast of Cisco's paranoia, and the company does have real enemies.
The biggest threat to the router business may be low-priced Layer 2 and Layer 3 Gigabit Ethernet switches, even those Cisco got when it acquired Granite Systems two years ago. Cisco downplays the value of such devices, promoting instead the idea that it will deliver such functionality through chassis that have routing and switching. Buying Granite Systems in September 1996 to freeze Gigabit Ethernet market. The idea had its 5 minutes of fame before vanishing, but Ascend Communications learned a great deal about telephony, ISDN and remote communications from its attempts to market inverse multiplexers. The experience and knowledge paid off when Ascend aligned itself with PSINet and other ISPs to develop its Max, TNT and Pipeline products.