Comments on: Cisco to close shop for 4 days to save money

Networking giant plans to close offices in the United States and Canada between December 29 and January 2 to help reach its goal of slashing $1 billion in operating expenses.

[Arrgster]

I Like cisco stuff and use it but i have to admit with companies like foundry out there, its hard to justify the high prices for cisco equipment. They might want to figure out how to lower prices. Back when they were king of the road they could get away with it, but times have changed and you can get some pretty good stuff for half the price....

[The_Decider]

Yup, Foundry products are first rate and priced very nicely.

The worst thing about Cisco is that they nickle and dime you to death. I can buy the chassis from Foundry and get the power supply, management module, and switch fabric. All that is left are ports which are modular. That is it for a non-redundant system. The cisco chassis, is the metal frame and that is it. And not that much less than the Foundry chassis.

Meanwhile, I have to pay extra for IP4, IP6, QOS, IDS, etc, etc in Cisco while all that is built in to the Foundry solution (Big Iron).

Last summer pricing switches the best I could get from Cisco is about $150,000 for a modular system, or $30,000 for an underfeatured non-modular system. The Big Iron system was a bit under $50,000 and slightly below the $150,000 switch and miles ahead of the $30,000.

Even the Cisco service plan was 3x as much. Cisco lock-in is pretty heinous also.

Yeah, their equipment is good but no better than Foundry, Allied Telesyn, etc.

They simply need to stop the price gouging.Yeah, their profits will drop, but not as much as more and more companies and organizations move away from Cisco.

[vagarob]

"The company plans to close its offices in the United States and Canada from December 29, 2008, until January 2, 2009. Cisco hopes the shutdown will help save $1 billion in operating expenses."

This is part of them cutting costs, this single act won't result in a savings of $1 billion - i think that should be re-worded :S

[Vegaman_Dan]

I'd love it if my company shut down for a week like that. I'd be willing to burn a week of vacation time to do it. The holidays time are such that a lot of people are off anyways so no real work can get done. Seems like a good use of the time to me.

[rrod182]

Foundry is nice, I was in the very first class for Foundry Certification ever actually, but they were bought by Brocade because the cheap prices hurt them quite a bit. Also at less than $3 a share an dwindling cash Brocade is not doing so hot., Expect the other guys (Foundry, Nortel, etc) recoup costs through poor support and layoffs and eventually price increases.

Cisco on the other had with close to $30 billion in liquidity, will be around for a while.

[The_Decider]

I think the Brocade + Foundry marriage is a good idea. Way better then the Ciena + World Wide Packets deal.

[SHADuck]

this downturn is serious!

the last time they had excess capacity, cisco had the workers do community service for 30% of pay