Does Cisco have competitors?

There's Nortel, 3com, Dell, HP, Juniper and many more. None has anything close to the market share that Cisco has.

As the lower end of the market becomes more of a commodity it's hard to tell but Cisco isn't going away anytime soon.

Jeff

You may wish to investigate Cisco System's Fiscal Year 2005 Competition Statement:

We compete in the networking and communications equipment markets, providing products and services for transporting data, voice, and video traffic across intranets, extranets, and the Internet. These markets are characterized by rapid change, converging technologies, and a migration to networking solutions that offer superior advantages. These market factors represent both an opportunity and a competitive threat to us. We compete with numerous vendors in each product category. The overall number of our competitors providing niche product solutions may increase. Also, the identity and composition of competitors may change as we increase our activity in our advanced technology markets. As we continue to expand our sales globally, we may see new competition in different geographic regions. In particular, we are seeing price-focused competitors from Asia, especially China, and we anticipate this will continue.

Our competitors include 3Com; Alcatel; Avaya; Avici Systems; Brocade Communications Systems, Inc.; Check Point Software Technologies; Ciena; D-Link Corporation; Dell; Enterasys Networks; Extreme Networks; F5 Networks, Inc. Force10 Networks, Inc.; Foundry Networks; Fujitsu; Hewlett-Packard Company; Huawei Technologies; Juniper Networks; Lucent Technologies; McDATA Corporation; NETGEAR, Inc.; Nokia; Nortel Networks; Redback Networks; Siemens AG; Sycamore Networks; and Symbol Technologies, Inc., among others.

Some of these companies compete across many of our product lines, while others are primarily focused in a specific product area.

Barriers to entry are relatively low, and new ventures to create products that do or could compete with our products are regularly formed. In addition, some of our competitors may have greater resources, including technical and engineering resources, than we do. As we expand into new markets, we will face competition not only from our existing competitors but also from other competitors, including existing companies with strong technological, marketing, and sales positions in those markets. We also sometimes face competition from resellers and distributors of our products. Companies with whom we have strategic alliances in some areas may be competitors in other areas.

The principal competitive factors in the markets in which we presently compete and may compete in the future include:

- The ability to provide a broad range of networking products and services.

- Product performance.

- Price.

- The ability to introduce new products, including products with price-performance advantages.

- The ability to reduce production costs.

- The ability to provide value-added features such as security, reliability, and investment protection.

- Conformance to standards.

- Market presence.

- The ability to provide financing.

We also face competition from customers to whom we license or supply technology and suppliers from whom we transfer technology. The inherent nature of networking requires interoperability. As such, we must cooperate and at the same time compete with many companies. Any inability to effectively manage these complicated relationships with customers, suppliers and strategic alliance partners could have a material adverse effect on our business, operating results, and financial condition and accordingly affect our chances of success.

Sincerely,

Brad Reese BradReese.Com - Cisco Technical Forums

Hendersonville Road, Suite 17 Asheville, North Carolina USA 28803 USA & Canada: 877-549-2680 International: 828-277-7272 Fax: 775-254-3558 AIM: R2MGrant Website:

87% market share is huge, but that's a data number and pertains to revenue. When you look at port count the numbers change a bit, against Cisco. The implication is that Cisco's ports are more expensive.

Other points to consider are emerging markets, where Cisco's competition is much more prominent, for example huawei-3Com

Yeah, if you really want to know how Cisco stacks up against competitors, just ask Cisco.

You're a joke.

Cisco's release outlines their major markets, gives a comprehensive list of their major competitors and identifies key areas which serious competitors need to address.

The original post simple wanted to know what other brands of router there are and whether Cisco's future looked 'bright'.

What's the joke?

BernieM

Juniper Networks states,

"Competition in the network infrastructure and security markets is intense.

Cisco Systems, has historically dominated the market, with other companies such as Nortel Networks, Alcatel, CheckPoint Software Technologies, and Huawei Technologies providing competitive products.

In addition, a number of public and private companies have announced plans for new products to address the same needs that our products address.

We believe that our ability to compete with Cisco and others depends upon our ability to demonstrate that our products are superior in meeting the needs of our current and potential customers.

We expect that, over time, large companies with significant resources, technical expertise, market experience, customer relationships and broad product lines, such as Cisco, Nortel, Alcatel, and Huawei Technologies, will introduce new products which are designed to compete more effectively in this market.

As a result, we expect to face increased competition in the future from larger companies with significantly more resources than we have.

Although we believe that our technology and the purpose-built features of our products make them unique and will enable us to compete effectively with these companies, we cannot guarantee that we will be successful.

Many of our current and potential competitors, such as Cisco, Nortel, Alcatel, and Huawei Technologies have significantly broader product lines than we do and may bundle their products with other networking products in a manner that may discourage customers from purchasing our products.

Also, many of our current and potential competitors have greater name recognition and more extensive customer bases that could be leveraged. Increased competition could result in price reduction, fewer customer orders, reduced gross margins and loss of market share, any of which could seriously harm our operating results.

There are also several other companies that claim to have products with greater capabilities than our products.

Consolidation in this industry has begun, with one or more of these smaller private companies being acquired by large, established suppliers of network infrastructure products, and we believe it is likely to continue.

As a result, we expect to face increased competition in the future from larger companies with significantly more resources than we have.

Several companies also provide solutions that can substitute for some uses of routers.

For example, high bandwidth Asynchronous Transfer Mode ("ATM") switches are used in the core of certain major backbone service providers.

ATM switches can carry a variety of traffic types, including voice, video and data, using fixed, 53 byte cells.

Companies that use ATM switches are enhancing their products with new software technologies such as Multi-Protocol Label Switching ("MPLS"), which can potentially simplify the task of mixing routers and switches in the same network.

These substitutes can reduce the need for large numbers of routers."

Page 8 - Competition

Sincerely,

Brad Reese BradReese.Com - Global Cisco Systems Pre-Sales Support

Hendersonville Road, Suite 17 Asheville, North Carolina USA 28803 USA & Canada: 877-549-2680 International: 828-277-7272 Fax: 775-254-3558 AIM: R2MGrant BradReese.Com - Cisco Video Portal

You might want to check out Vyatta.

You can get performance on a commodity PC (32-bit, 33mhz PCI bus) roughly on par with a 2600 series router... and it's open-source.

They just reached the "v1.0" milestone...

Juniper appears quite concerned about solutions that "substitute" for routers.

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Juniper Networks states,

"Competition in the network infrastructure and security markets is intense.

Cisco Systems, has historically dominated the market, with other companies such as Nortel Networks, Alcatel, CheckPoint Software Technologies, and Huawei Technologies providing competitive products.

In addition, a number of public and private companies have announced plans for new products to address the same needs that our products address.

We believe that our ability to compete with Cisco and others depends upon our ability to demonstrate that our products are superior in meeting the needs of our current and potential customers.

We expect that, over time, large companies with significant resources, technical expertise, market experience, customer relationships and broad product lines, such as Cisco, Nortel, Alcatel, and Huawei Technologies, will introduce new products which are designed to compete

more effectively in this market.

As a result, we expect to face increased competition in the future from

larger companies with significantly more resources than we have.

Although we believe that our technology and the purpose-built features of our products make them unique and will enable us to compete effectively with these companies, we cannot guarantee that we will be successful.

Many of our current and potential competitors, such as Cisco, Nortel, Alcatel, and Huawei Technologies have significantly broader product lines than we do and may bundle their products with other networking products in a manner that may discourage customers from purchasing our products.

Also, many of our current and potential competitors have greater name recognition and more extensive customer bases that could be leveraged. Increased competition could result in price reduction, fewer customer orders, reduced gross margins and loss of market share, any of which could seriously harm our operating results.

There are also several other companies that claim to have products with

greater capabilities than our products.

Consolidation in this industry has begun, with one or more of these smaller private companies being acquired by large, established suppliers of network infrastructure products, and we believe it is likely to continue.

As a result, we expect to face increased competition in the future from

larger companies with significantly more resources than we have.

Several companies also provide solutions that can substitute for some uses of routers.

For example, high bandwidth Asynchronous Transfer Mode ("ATM") switches are used in the core of certain major backbone service providers.

ATM switches can carry a variety of traffic types, including voice, video and data, using fixed, 53 byte cells.

Companies that use ATM switches are enhancing their products with new software technologies such as Multi-Protocol Label Switching ("MPLS"), which can potentially simplify the task of mixing routers and switches in the same network.

These substitutes can reduce the need for large numbers of routers."

Page 8 - Competition

Sincerely,

Brad Reese BradReese.Com - Global Cisco Systems Pre-Sales Support

Hendersonville Road, Suite 17 Asheville, North Carolina USA 28803 USA & Canada: 877-549-2680 International: 828-277-7272 Fax: 775-254-3558 AIM: R2MGrant BradReese.Com - Cisco Technical Forums