Should Cisco Outsource IOS Development?

About a year ago last summer, HP (which was in the midst of prepping for the big breakup) gave the rights to Open VMS to a company called VMS Software. The naming may come off not as a surprise, but when I found their site the other day, the logo was a surprise, it mimics the Digital Equipment Corporation logo which was the original publisher of this now 37 year old operating system, which is one of the oldest and continually supported to this day. This operating system is not en vogue, because reliability for years and years without problems would not be Politically Correct in a world where technology by norm must change every 3 years whether you like it or not. (Thanks to that goddamned IBM PC, and the IT movement which created hotshot admins and clueless CIOs – similar to the ones running Cisco for this!)

VMS Software Incorporated has even done a even ballsy approach of “insourcing” by taking many former developers and engineers who worked for DEC prior to them going out of business and will further develop the OS to be ported over to newer Itanium chips and perhaps X86 platforms.

Now what could this mean for Cisco for networking? Maybe they should stop suing the startups who were trying to advance Cisco? Maybe there are people within the Cisco community (I mean the 10,000 laid off people over the last year or so) that would be willing to take the responsibility of the IOS development and I dunno, make it an app and have the software run on whiteboxes that in some cases have better hardware reliability than Cisco’s own? Make IOS more nimble? Why should a third party company in India be controlling the software quality (or hell even hardware reliability?)

I guess we should blame Don Valentine for creating Cisco into a company that wasn’t about building off their own innovation, but to make a quick buck ever since the early 1990s. It took a very long time to see how much destruction that was caused by him, and his cronies that would succeed him. This isn’t a hit against capitalism, but Cisco is not a technology company, its an industrial company that sells more integrated circuits than others.

HPQ’s Spinoffs – Bad Idea

Not to sound like I hate consumers, but the spinoff of HP’s personal systems and enterprise unit is so insane, I can’t figure out why only that HP was thinking of the minds of non enterprise and not Wall Street.

HPQ shouldn’t had broken up into two. As I suggested well over two years ago, HP really need to do the following, but more updated.

• Spin off the Personal Systems and call it Compaq (No joke, Dell was right on Twitter.) Since the last suggestion, I’d say put the X86 and Itainum server biz in this spinoff as well. It would be the best IT hardware company between printers, PCs, allegedly dated servers and business calculators and DeskJets that no one has bought since they added a 4 figure model number.
• Spinoff networking. The combo between 3Com, H3C and the Procurve brands could be a great competitive strategy for stocks. HP’s networking would be nimble than Cisco, and a more nimble company could actually drive up true profits and margins – even if hardware defined networks are allegedly going away.
•  Shutting off Palm’s WebOS was ridiculous , and there needs to be more competition between Windows Phone, the Droid and the iOS. I’ve picked my poison with Apple’s iOS, but I can’t trust tinker friendly devices like the Droid or Windows Phone.  WebOS had a good competitive mobile operating system that could still have a future. Sell it to Private Equity or a VC firm
• EDS needs to be spun off as a separate entity again. I don’t think EDS served well under HP.  
• Breakup Software, Autonomy was horrible acquisition, why has Cisco ever seen such writeoff like they did with HP?

I have not followed up with HP’s breakup, but i don’t like how its simplified with two different companies. HP is so complicated, they have to break up or spin off multiple properties. Oh and don’t count on the Brooklyn Bully known as Carl Icahn who thinks he can brownnose into Apple’s stock and screw up their finances while HP and Cisco are the real entities that need institutional shareholder intervention. Despite how a wussie John Chambers is, he not as wimpy as Tim Cook is to Icahn’s eyes. He only buts into companies who he knows won’t fight back. And that Brooklyn (or Queens) Bully likes his weak CEO peers, so he would never touch John Chambers’ with a 10′ pole!

CSCO and VMW again?

NetworkWorld reported last week that Cisco was looking at buying VMware again, after such rumors were debunked on a number of times over the last few years.

Teflon John (or Johnny Boy) Chambers is playing the hawk, eyeing on pray one last time before he semi retires as CEO, but retains as chairman. Obviously he wants a big one to end his career with a bang.

Meanwhile, Cisco’s new CEO is no hope ether. He’s just as a filthy useless hack as Chambers, and he’s got no technical background. Even with a new Capt on the new ship, it will still be the same ol schtick, of buying nobodies and buying up salesforce, dump the non technical people, outsource production, quality and support to third party entities in India, to then discontinue the product and claim it didn’t sell to well, then repeat this same practice over and over. And lets not forget no sales people ever get fired at Cisco, only the engineers that designed a decent product. Maybe I should say “decent” product, as Cisco doesn’t buy blue chip IT companies, they buy the K-Mart brand than shine it up with the Blue Chip Golden Gate Bridge Logo with Helvetica sub typeface.

I cannot understand in 4 years, where Cisco’s future was started to get questioned that no Wall Street analyst can’t have the balls to question Cisco in a serious way and not fall into a Lemming and drink the Kool Aid and sing the Cisco’s Let the Good Times Roll theme song.

It’s beyond insane.

Cisco Leads in Unified Communications…

but yet they still can’t bridge the complexity of voice technology (data guys) and IP networking (phone guys)?

I find Cisco networking in general nothing but Networking 202, and everything that is taught to the customer or the user is hypothetical. Ridden with three letter acronyms, and the confusion between hyphenated-commands verses non hyphenated commands.

I had to deal with a customer who has an older CME 4.1 running on an IOS router, and all of a sudden the no one could hear outside calls and attempts to get the thing back up and running took a while. Other weird quirks is the time it takes for Cisco to answer inbound calls, etc and the deciphering what’s is a dial-peer, what’s a call leg, and when to set up a call leg to a dial-peer, etc.

Now reading a bunch of documents in hardcopy and online, I understand the concept. Such as trying to get a inbound VOIP call to route to a third party SIP voicemail system. I understand the basics of SIP realms, domains, registers.  In my head, I want to route an incoming analog trunk (or FXO) to the CME then if there is no answer, route the call onto the SIP trunk onto the third party VM system. The problem is there isn’t much clarity of how to get all three to route properly.

I blame this on Cisco hiring contractors to write documents for their products while Cisco still employes so many Senior Vice Presidents that could care less what a Dial Peer means to them.

I also do not understand why Cisco cannot publish manuals that can give me straight forward directions without dancing along with the hypothetical. What’s even more crazy is how Cisco forces customers to get certified in CCIE to know the basics. I’d rather support other companies that don’t require certification of IT systems because I find the certification wrong on so many levels. The lessons are so basic, it shouldn’t need a certification, and then it enables the person to be a professional Cisco Fanboy who will say “Cisco all the way” because “You can’t beat Cisco” and “Cisco does everything right.” And so many Cisco Professional Fanboys often brownnose themselves in Corporate America that they forget those skills they learned in that precious CCIE courses!

I actually took pictures of a Cisco CCIE VOIP textbook because $62 (US) for a textbook that SHOULD BE included in the (already overpriced, short rack life) systems they sell was too costly!

Cisco has successfully sold against more reliable, and easier to user systems from say Avaya, Nortel (actually that’s a lie – Nortel was too complicated) or even the smaller key systems.) To be quite honest, their legacy would likely be them calling the Voice over IP market accurately, not SDN, not cloud networks, not firewalls etc.

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Lies Cisco Tells Me: We’re In the Best Position Ever

They wonder why the business media lacks credibility when they just run like lap dogs and have a slobbering love affair with companies that produce abstract equipment and services.

Cisco reported earnings a couple weeks ago and spin doctors like “Teflon John” Chambers, their CEO said it was their best quarter and they couldn’t be so happy with their results.

Well if you read Brad Reese’s stories, it doesn’t look good. His report states that Cisco’s routers are at a new low for their fiscal year. Now given this is the 3Q for the company, the company measures sales in 9 month intervals. I never heard of such company of any sector in any industry use this 9-month scheme. Supposedly this measurement was able to predict the doom and gloom in the US Financial industry before the Crisis in 2008, and the cutbacks in the European public sector.

But how can Cisco think they can sell routers every quarter by the billions like I dunno McDonalds cheeseburgers? The major mistake at Cisco was even back in the 90s and the last decade to sell metal boxes and by the tons instead of selling premium software like the complicated IOS.

Again competitors like HP, Netgear and others don’t sell as much, and provide lifetime warranties and premium support and services. Their numbers are probably just like Cisco’s, but the business MSM won’t say a peep but they’ll cheer on with Cisco’s good or bad numbers – depending on the quarter.

No one wants to be tough on Cisco, because why would they want to make Chambers be so angry by challenging his practices such as beating earnings by cutting jobs that would help build the company financially.

It’s like beating a dead horse. Just move on. And when you do hear about Cisco on TV, just turn the channel.

Why do Cisco Fanboys just dump their full running-configs online?

I don’t get this

The internet never forgives or forgets your faux-pas network configuration.

I never understood why in the hell do people just dump a running-config online and not even redact their IP addresses, secret passwords and enable passwords. Are you trying to give the bad boys bad ideas?

You don’t take screengrabs of your entire NT configuration?

You don’t dump a terminal session if you use a non Cisco IP or traditional telephone systems?
The question is why are their idiots who think the only way to fix or address a problem to fix is to just dump a configuration?

Don’t get me started with the blogs out there that take a running config and try to put context to the reader in a sucky  and lazy manner. You want to teach people how to config? Teach them how to actually do it in real time so we can know what prompt level to enter them in. IOS is one of the worst network operating systems I’ve had to deal with.  Doesn’t help manners when the haves brag about their know alls to the have nots, who struggle with CLI interfaces…

John Chambers Retires – 15 years late!

I never understood how John Chambers or any CEO of any major high technology company can be around for so long and yet see their own company fall apart – and it has nothing to do with tax codes!

Personally, I find SDN a system that will fit for all, it’s really a hard-on for the Wall Street types that want fast pardon the cliche “double-digit growth.”

Chambers’ departure comes at a cost of thousands upon thousands of technical level employees getting cut due to early retirement offers, H1B visas or just plain ol’ contracting the engineering to completely different company with cheap labor costs. What does this mean to the Cisco customer. Really third rate quality, if a router breaks down, the best solution is to pay zillions of dollars for a new router with crappy support contracts, since technical support at Cisco is non-existant.

The problem that plagues Chambers’ was his pleasure to Wall Street or the US Business media whom of which have given this guy so many sugary coated interviews and never can get him to admit his weaknesses such as his destruction of a once innovative, high tech, enterprise technology company.

Technical users probably care less about it’s stock price or its ridiculous large checking account of over $50 billion dollars, only 4 billion or less is kept here in the states. Who knows if Cisco really has $50 billion in cash?

Another bothersome thing Chambers’ mentioned on CNBC today is how Cisco continues to be an “architecture” play. I should have the right to believe in the hippie “Coexist” movement where I can use ProCurve switching, another vendor’s firewall and another vendor’s wireless solutions. Networks are networks, and sticking on old protocols in todays ever changing world of mobility (even if many will use PCs – whether its a notebook or a desktop with notebook components for many years to come) and other emerging technologies like virtualization.

John Chambers should not be proud of his 170 companies he acquired at Cisco. True, innovative companies don’t need to buy up a company and block competition by giving the EOL death sentence.

And as it’s been mentioned here, is how Cisco has a strong marketing and salesforce which is the key ingredient to a toxic decline.  People who never used an IOS switch or router and just build PowerPoints all day long makes a 5 year old seem to be more productive than the college educated adults who all they do is break ethical boundaries and give their customers setbacks such as giving them free phones, free wireless equipment and crappy firewalls and guess what? You get breaches like what happened at Staples and Home Depot whom have been influenced by the Cisco propaganda as they use more Cisco solutions than before.

Cisco had a time and place in PC history, but their Enron like greed, attitude, arrogance and financial engineering is still an unwritten story.  Who knows when Cisco will finally shed its mortal coil. It could be very soon.

In closing, I have to say this – GOOD RIDDANCE TEFLON JOHN!

Cisco’s Lies, Lies and more Lies

Cisco last week was flaunting on the social media that “pulled away from Microsoft once more, growing collaboration revenues”

Humm, how can they pull Microsoft when the company is hemorrhaging in cash?

For growth, there must be loss. And for a company that has missed a quarter, and beat the next quarter and severely miss the following quarter shows a pattern of how Cisco can sustain as a company. Cisco allegedly is paying off their customers to buy in of their products, that allegedly works, you know. And I suspect this is in the masses. Think of the Surface tablet for Microsoft, and just multiply it by the billions for Cisco.

Collaboration, if I am not mistaken includes Unified Communications, their VOIP offerings (each quarter different units gets realigned to show that the company is “growing” which as you follow this blog, you know is false.) I’ve seen more Cisco VOIP phones in more places, and much more in the last year or so.

The question is, is Cisco really making a true profit or is this yet another example of “financial engineering”?

There are so many people who think these payoffs or paying off research firms are conspiracies. This is 2015, not 2010, people should not be as naive to believe that Cisco is this great networking company. The Emperor Has No Clothes, John Chambers’s retirement is well overdue. SDN isn’t the problem. It’s buying too many companies and not executing. Cisco in theory has all the patents and resources to go to the next step, but is playing the corporate tax reform card as the reason they can’t innovate.

And John, please stop telling the media about being “solutions” company.  “Solutions” means taking alleged open source software and profit by compiling it and “selling” it instead of it being a product.

BradReese.com: Web Security going EOL after acquistion

Brad Reese posted a rumor recently that Cisco may pull the plug on their Cloud Web Security and issue extended support for a few more years.

The problem is the real world cannot keep upgrading systems every 3 years to give Cisco more inflated profits with really pricey margins of equipment and services. If a customer locks in with Cisco, they then have to worry if the item goes EOL or EOS. Why?

These are the types of lock-ins that should make a customer worry. Especially with security. With the Sony breach, who knows how that attack happened. And all the other breaches. If the Target, The Home Depot and Staples breaches lied upon a Cisco security product, I’d fire those fanboys ASAP.

I’d be looking at alternatives. Especially on security, something Cisco hasn’t done right.

Why CCNAs suck

Why is it so important to get a piece of paper known as the Cisco Certified Network Analyst?

I find the CCNA system broken. 21 years ago when it first came to be, it had good intentions, but now its just an official badge of being a Professional Cisco Fanboy (or fangirl.) IP Networking has been open and standardized for the most part in the last 2 decades. Why should I pay thousands of dollars to learn proprietary (I won’t say outdated or old) technologies and then believe the notion to “always go with Cisco” and say things like “go Cisco all the way” and believe the bullbleep Ci$co preaches?

It’s a distraction, it makes great talk for an egomaniac to say “look at me, I’m going onto another CCNA track!  Yeah for me!!!” You get stuck on these tracks, then you want more. Then you learn 2 years later how to make an Ethernet plug, which is so pathetic because a mentally disabled person around the age of 12 could be able to master it in a matter of a day, which you it would take 10 days to learn. And it just becomes an embarrassment to the people around you, the professional Cisco Fanboy.

I also find it astounding how Cisco does not seem to publish documentation with real world examples but always the college-esque, learn on theory and DIY attempt it in the real world? Finding answers is just exhausting being on Google or Bing for a couple of hours a day.

However, Cisco does – in fact, publish what you consider a “manual” in the theme of a CCNA textbook, the cost? Shell out a $100 and expect that money flowing to Cisco and burn if off on a useless acquisition or payoff their rich execs – who DO NOT PRODUCE REAL PRODUCTIVE VALUE!

I should have the right to learn a networking system without needing to go to a private school and be forced to drink the Kool aid!