As an engineer, I think one of the problems with UCS is engineering. The software release was NEVER on time. Always lots of issues in the last minute. It gets delayed for a couple of months every single time. No accountability. Nobody gets blamed or fired. Of course the business will suffer: it is already a saturated business and how can you compete with sub-par engineering? To me, it is not because we do not have the talents. It is because of the system, the process, the mindset of the engineering leaders: How do we deliver the best quality software products on the market? I now appreciate there is actually science and research on so called software development process. It is not merely making some fancy plans and then deliver low quality products. I say that only from the engineering perspective. To me, it is quite understandable why revenue is declining: The sub-par quality software, no clear road map or at least the current direction is not working. Of course you can blame the market competition, but the engineering problem will come back and eat you just like now. The leaders focused more on the strategy or buzzwords, I hope they could help with the quality and accountability. But it is hard to change the mindset or process in a large organization like Cisco. Well, unfortunately, it is the engineers who bear the responsibilities for the failed leadership.
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Now we re-release 3850s and 4500s as Cat. 9K, and call it innovation.
They call it a new licensing scheme where you have to keep paying over and over again for broken code. Life's good when you have no competition.
Cisco has always been "good enough". It took a switch towards in-house switches/routers (Amazon, Google, FB), for people to realize enough of the paying the Cisco tax.
Cisco also bought Crescendo in the 90s (5500, 6500, MPLS team). They did not innovate LAN switching - they got it through acquisition.
Has is Miraki an innovation? Cisco bought the company, Cisco didn't innovate anything.
MPLS had many great wins with 5500, 6500, MDS, UCS. But I think they jumped the shark with 9k ACI and Tetration. The glory days have passed. Now we re-release 3850s and 4500s as Cat. 9K, and call it innovation. Meraki acquisition probably brought the latest game changing innovation. They are the new winner like Crescendo in the past.
UCS hasn't had an original UCS idea since MPLS "retired" to start Insieme.
Nobody purchases UCS now days. There are so many cheaper options available. HP blade server is 3 times cheaper than Cisco UCS. Newer white box servers are even cheaper than HP. Taiwan based server blades are also very cheap & reliable too for 3 years & after 3 years they have replace server hardware anyway.So who would want to deploy expensive buggy Shico blade servers. After few quarters new UCS boxes will be on a death row.
A technology company filled with snake oil salesman will not stay competitive. Have you seen the garbage within Cisco's Hyper-Innovation Living Labs? Absolutely zero substance.