Why DELL PowerConnect and Juniper are so rare ? Why do enterprises stick with Cisco?

Question

I have a little question, I'm actually studing IT in France, and when looking on alternative on the very [...] very expensive Cisco equipments, I've found Juniper and DELL PowerConnect pretty attractive on features and price, but I rarely see something else than the classics Cisco/LinkSys, HP Procurve and Netgear..

Why it's so rare to find those switch ? They looks really great but... I've never seen any Juniper or Powerconnect...

Why do enterprises stick with the expensive Cisco ?

I've tried to find how to buy both, it's quite easy with PowerConnect, everything is on the DELL website, but it looks it's very hard to find Juniper equipments in France :(

Thank you !

EDIt: For those who don't know JunOS, here is a video: http://www.exiletv.com/Podcast/videos/junos1.mov , It's really Amazing !

Solution 1

'everyone' knows cisco... it's [probably] easier to find consultant who has ccna/similar than one who has experience with junos, dell and all other extreme networks/foundry, etc.

i don't have traumatic experience form work with powerconnect - does the trick for me. and when it comes to juniper [but routers, not switches] - well, they carry quite a portion of internet traffic - i'd dare to say that they have bigger market share in carriers' core than cisco [or maybe huawei has already eaten most of the cake?]

Solution 2

No one ever got fired for buying Cisco.

Solution 3

Cisco is what they are because the make this simple promise:

"You write us a big fat check and we'll solve your problem." It doesn't really matter what the "problem" is, if it is related in some vague way to networking, cisco will have a solution to the problem.

No other company can really make that same universal promise. Juniper comes close, but most other "networking" or "security" companies solve fewer problems than actually exist.

They're not the best, they're certainly not the cheapest or the most reliable, but they have the resources to make whatever issues you may have go away.

There are likely singe purpose companies that make domain specific solutions to some subset of your problems, but if you're a company focused on making widgets, you're really "best" off just letting your cisco account rep tell you how to solve whatever problem of the week you may be facing. If you stay under the cisco umbrella, you have one support number, one sales rep, one guy to yell at, and one big ass check to write every year. Everything is simpler.

If you chose "best of breed" for every situation, you wind up with a much more complex environment to support, and you're more reliant on the person who choses "best of breed".

Solution 4

Kedare,

To actually answer your first question about finding Juniper switches to buy.

The reason it is difficult is first Juniper are new to the switch market (been in networking a long time but not switches) so none really on the second hand market yet.

Second the channel sales model Juniper and Cisco use are a little different so big domestic distributors do not tend to supply Juniper kit and those that do are not really allowed to supply to a retailer only reseller so the focus in on business sales. Cisco do a similar thing but do allow for distribution to sell to retailers and also they have a lot of kit on the second hand market due to the time in the market place.

As to why pick Cisco over others? Cisco is one of the longest running network switch provider in the market and at one time provided the only real choice for larger businesses and so may companies got tied in and the cost and time to change a whole network is huge (I know, I have done it for several customers of my employer). Also Cisco have a very big sales team and channel, more resellers sell Cisco in the world so they get into more companies and have a greater global reach.

However the enterprise switching world is changing, HP have acquired 3Com which put them in a very, very strong market position with number of ports sold also 3Com and own the China market, which is the fastest growing IT market in the world. This gives HP a good chance of challenging Cisco for the first time. Juniper are also the fastest growing enterprise switch vendor last year (according to Gartner) so are becoming a lot bigger.

So enterprises do not just use Cisco and some very big very demanding companies find that Cisco does not do what they require e.g New York Stock Exchange use Juniper.

If you want to learn Juniper, go and learn JUNOS you can buy a cheap J router or do a search or Juniper Olive.

Andy

Solution 5

I think part of the reason Cisco is so popular besides the reliability of equipment is that they have built a culture of network education around their products. Besides the certifications, there are many books, some published by Cisco itself. Although the education is based around Cisco equipment, they make sure it is more about networking itself and how it actually works. This, in my mind, makes their network education more classy and valuable to people because if you know the theory you could go learn other technologies with out too much difficulty.

People ending up learning from these books and learning how to use Cisco equipment as part of it, even though other technologies are very similar, people stick with what they know. So a result of this culture of education, Cisco ends up being what people know, as pQd said.

Also, they have lots of marketing, at least these days. When I mention Cisco to people who don't work with technology, they all go "Oh ya, those commercials about how they make the Internet run."

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Comments

[Kyle Brandt]

As a side note, I have been perfectly happy with my power-connect switches. The cli is very similar to that of Cisco's IOS as well.

[Philip]

+1, There are most Cisco consultants than any other network gear. More consultants = Lower consulting fees = More business for Cisco.

[xeon]

I have had a lot of great experiences with HP ProCurve. They have a great warranty. I just had a 5 year old switch replaced without question for a burned out fan...

[pQd]

and ibm and oracle...

[kmarsh]

I have had a semi-traumatic experience with PowerConnect. At this point, I would not use them as any more than dumb switches.

[chris]

The cisco documentation and education adds tremendous value to the networking field. Even if you're working with non-cisco stuff, the documentation on how protocol X works is still useful.

[Philip]

+1 "You write us a big fat check and we'll solve your problem."

[MrGigu]

@pQd - I'm pretty sure if I purchased a 4-processor Intel Oracle license my boss would fire me (considering we're an SQL Server shop)

[dunxd]

Although PowerConnect OS and Cisco IOS are very very similar, some of the features have different names, and because they are so strong on training everyone understand's Cisco's nomenclature. Dell haven't made a good go of translating. Dell's PowerConnect documentation is also pretty poor - one of those things where you need to know what they call something before you can find the documentation about it... If they sorted all that out, I am sure they would have a better market for their products.