Cicso's marketing department has done a great job of creating a mystique surrounding their products. I believe that they make create enterprise products. (Let's not talk about their Linksys division.) But Cisco is not the only supplier of great enterprise grade products. However, they are very good at marketing. They make you think that you need their products in order to build a first class data center. Of course that is not true. As you say, other vendors make some great products.

I'm just saying that when you make great products AND you have a great marketing department then you can persuade a lot of people to pay more for your products even though your competitors also make great products.