Cisco recently bought IronPort, and the Alcatel Lucent merger has finally gone through. But does all this acquisition activity mean less choice for VARs and end-users? Or does it mean more integration plug and play style technology? What are the major mergers of last year and what mergers or buyouts had the greatest effect on the networking channel? What will happen this year in mergers within the networking sector?
Do you have a network industry expert, who could give me a breakdown on all the acquisition activity that Cisco has been involved in during the last two years?
And could comment on what Cisco’s strategy appears to be? They seem to be invading all the territory of all the companies (service providers like IBM, and security vendors like Symantec) that used to be their partners.
Meanwhile, how will their rivals, at Alcatel/Lucent shape up? They shed a load of staff recently, but are there any encouraging signs for them?
What does all the acquisition mean for the channel? Should resellers look for new, niche partners, who will give them higher margins? But where are they?
What technology areas are the involved in? And how long will it be before Cisco neutralises them too?
What are the hot new technology areas, where niche players can offer high margin alternatives to Cisco? SSL VPNs? Wan Acceleration? Network security?
Are you an IT integrator, or networking reseller? Have you been shafted following a merger between two vendors? What’s the typical chain on events?
If you have any experts who can comment on this, it would be great.
Or any market reports that identify any exciting new areas.
The Three Stages of a new invention:
Every new technology area has three stages of reaction from Cisco:
1. It’ll never work. 2. It might work, but why would you want to. 3. We’ve said this was a god idea all along.
The Five Stages of Hot technology:
What is DataGrab?
Get me DataGrab
Get Me a Datagrab lookalike
Cisco’s Bought DataGrab
What was DataGrab?
