Cisco's made DNA Center open enough to out-run Amazon As we reported yesterday, the idea that Amazon might make its own switches into some kind of a captive gateway between on-premises data centres and the AWS cloud sent shivers through investors in traditional networking vendors – and none so much as Cisco. Another way of looking at the same announcement is that AWS is entering …
The problem they may face is that the question isn't whether they can do the same as AWS it's why someone may choose to also implement Cisco in an AWS environment. If they achieve the same or similar things then why pay another vendor and complicate support operations? AWS or Azure will be a given once cloud adoption begins to build, but traditional network and security vendors are very much optional. Cisco has a large and loyal following from people who got their CCNA and made a career from it, but will that loyalty continue in a world moving much faster than Cisco have ever managed? My feeling is that we'll see one generation (refresh cycle) where loyalty wins and the very next cycle will see everyone realise they are paying for something they already have. We're already seeing this with firewall vendors in the cloud where people realise they can block ports natively and weren't using the "advanced security features" they'd been paying for. I like Cisco, but I'm not sure they'll win against a cloud giant.
Cisco just don't get it, this will come down to price, not "extra's" that Cisco think they can charge more for, in fact the opposite. Amazon will "dumb down" their switches to the maximum amount, which in reality MOST datacentres applications is fine because they operate in little more than dumb unmanaged mode anyway.
... that Cisco has enough active developers to out compete Amazon is ludicrous. Even if we were comparing like for like (which is AWS employed devs vs. Cisco employed devs), not Cisco registered devs vs AWS registered devs, AWS numbers will be orders of magnitudes higher.
Dont forget that AWS pretty much generates 8-10 new software products per month and whilst you can criticise them for their "throw a product to the wall and hope it sticks" approach, there is zero chance of Cisco out competing even in software defined networking.
Large helping of fail please.
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