Never got fired for IBM...

"...then realizing the costs were too high and the benefit too limited."

Sometimes the phrase simply meant the 'name brand' vendor was an acceptable fall-back supplier if the alternatives were questionable.

"Do we want to take your parents someplace new for dinner?"
"Well, we've never gone wrong with Outback."

..products and for good reason, they work. I've never heard of an all out outcry for Cisco to change how they do things, from the community, either here or elsewhere. They do good product that work well and work right.

Granted, Cisco is more expensive, but I am also a strong believer that in today's world, you get what you pay for. The question is not; do you want a Ferrari or a 300Z, the question is how do you want that car to work? Is it ok if it fails? Is it ok if it takes longer to service? Is it ok to be told that there isn't anything you can do about the outage. Personally, everytime a Cisco device failed, I had one within 24 hrs on the way. It never really took more than 72 hrs to fix an issue. I was never told that something that wasn't working right was unfixable. That's Cisco to me.

Besides, Cisco do sell 300Zs ;-)

TCB

And how long they can accept Downtime.

With Cisco I've never had an issue that wasn't fixable very quickly.

However with other suppliers I have been told on numerous occasions that a failed item will take over a month to replace which always resulted in another new device being purchased.

Here it's not the type of Car or the reliability of it that is in question but more the fact that the Owner needs to be able to accept what happens and live with it. I know people who are really happy with Ferrari's and they can live with the fact that you get to drive them away from the Service Agent home only to have to get the Service Agent to come out and tow it back in for repair because it broke on the way home.

Depending on what the company who buys this stuff actually does it may be better for them to buy other makes and just spring for a replacement rather than wait for a Warranty Claim to be processed. Then when the replacement is supplied UG they keep it as a spare for the next outage or maybe even forget about a Warranty Claim.

With the High End Cisco stuff it's generally easier to configure simple to recover from problems and just plain easier to use but having said that not everyone needs it so they use cheaper items that could just as easily be supplied by another maker.

For really Secure Environments I wouldn't go past Cisco and I wouldn't consider any other product, but equally for ordinary business who don't have the need I wouldn't recommend Cisco but something that better suited their needs and budget. To these people Warranty is a very overrated thing and is more a selling point rather than a fall back position.

I've worked with Cisco Systems that have performed flawlessly and I have also setup other makers systems which have worked as well for different organizations so here it all depends on the requirements of the organization who needs the stuff to begin with.

When I've looked at replacement for Cisco equipment for the High End Stuff I have not found a suitable supplier other than Cisco who have the same features and ease of use for the entire system. Overall in situations like these Cisco isn't more expensive just the only option for that location. It's no good saving a few thousand $ if it costs you millions in lost production. With some environments this happens.

Then you have some suppliers who do not repair things but supply replacement product to the same specification and this can quite often result in the replacement or a newly purchased item not being suitable for the intended use without a massive modification to the existing system being required. It happens far more often that I'm comfortable with when other suppliers are involved who sell on a budget. ;)

Col