“We were talking about the There’s Something About Mary movie [released in 1998],” Dave said. “A couple of investors were coming up the stairs. Carl and I sort of look alike, and they asked, “Who is Carl Russo . . .?”
“We pointed at each other at the same time, and we both said, ‘Him.’”
Indeed, there was something about this relaxed, but intense pair of Cisco executives. Although they were joking around with Cerent’s arriving (potential) investors that day, both were serious about growing the business – Carl as CEO and Dave as one of Cerent’s sales leaders.
Cisco Could Do No Wrong . . .
Kevin Tolly, in December 1999, wrote, “Cisco has its own allure and is not governed by the rules that govern other vendors . . .” He took a lot of flak for apparently elevating Cisco above the rest of the equipment manufacturing pack – Nortel, Lucent, Alcatel, and many others.
Tolly had to quickly clarify his position: “What I mean is, Cisco's customers often let the company ‘get away’ with things that other vendors would never be allowed to get away with. For example, if the Accelar did not perform at wire-speed at Layer 2 and 3, for all ports, with quality of service disabled or enabled -- Nortel Networks would have a tough time trying to sell it in the marketplace. Cisco's customers, however, don't seem to mind a bit that the Catalyst cannot perform anywhere near wire-speed.”
Looking back, by 1999, Cisco still had not cracked the service provider market in a big way; at least not with the network infrastructure organizations that decided where the billions of dollars of transport and switching equipment were deployed.
Unlike the Enterprise customer segment, the Service Providers (in particular, telcos), would not let Cisco get away with products that were not RUS-listed, nor Telcordia compliant, let alone not meeting the basic five ‘9s’ of reliability. And for a product not to meet baseline specifications, such as Cisco’s Catalyst’s poor performance, it would never reach the field. Orders for it would not be allowed to be placed.
Indeed, Cisco continued to grow faster than all of its competitors, the company kept acquiring startups to bolster its engineering staff and expand its market reach [1], and the San Jose-based giant could do no wrong, especially in the eyes of Wall Street and the industry analysts.
The reason for selecting one of Cisco's competitors?
Tolly adds, “The Nortel gear was perfectly matched to its need, and with it, the company calculated WAN link savings over the Cisco products that was measured in millions of dollars annually.”
Do you agree with Tolly’s assertion, at least before the dot.com bust and telecom meltdown that . . . “There's something about Cisco?”
What about today?
[1] Cisco acquired Cerent for $6.9 billion in the summer of 1999 and finalized the deal in November 1999, just before Tolly penned these words.
[2] The Cerent acquisition not only gave Cisco engineering talent and hundreds of new service provider customers, but Cerent’s service provider orientation helped to transform Cisco into a company that built higher quality products and networking platforms that suited the service providers’ stringent product and network performance requirements.
[3] Guest column: There’s something about Cisco, Kevin Tolly, Computerworld. December 1, 1999.
[4] There's Something About Cisco, Andy Serwer with reporter associates Irene Gashurov and Angela Key, Fortune, May 15, 2000.