Who does Cisco fear the most?
Market research firm GlobalTouch has completed an extensive survey for Cisco of its global small business channel partners, including New Zealand.
Surveys can highlight possible moves that companies may be interested in making, like politicians often float an idea publicly to test the proverbial water. But this survey was different for me, as it shows who Cisco really fears.
Many questions related to the proportion that the Cisco brand represents of the channel partners' revenues or gross margins. But of most interest was a question about what preferred brand do you sell in each category. This illustrates who Cisco fears the most. Here are the lists:
Switches Telephone & Phone Systems Security Systems Wireless Products
- 3Com
- Adtran
- Allied Telesyn
- Alcatel
- Brocase / Foundry
- Dell
- D-Link
- Extreme
- HP Procurve
- Huawei
- Juniper
- NetGear
- Nortel (Avaya)
- Alcatel
- Avaya
- 3Com
- HP
- Lucent
- Mitel
- NEC
- Phillips
- Shoretel
- Siemens
- Checkpoint
- Fortinet
- HP
- Juniper
- McAfee
- SonicWall
- Symantec
- 3Com
- AeroHive
- Alcatel
- Allied Telesyn
- Aruba
- D-Link
- HP
- Meru
- Motorola
- NetGear
- Ruckus
- Trapeze
Cisco should be congratulated for a later question that tries to identify issues or pain points that “are slowing or disrupting your ability to increase your Cisco Small Business revenue”.
Potential partner pain points
- Length of Time to obtain Cisco pricing (including an estimate of the number of days to confirm Cisco product pricing)
- Length of Time to resolve Cisco pricing approval process (i.e. OIP approval, DART approval, etc.)
- Length of Time to obtain incentive approval for OIP
- Post-sales incentive payment resolution (i.e. receipt of PDF payments)
- Lack of Product availability through Distribution
- Lack of named Account Management or Cisco account support (i.e. virtual or through distribution)
- Lack of virtual (telephone) or distribution
- Account Management or Cisco account support
- Difficulty in finding the appropriate materials and resources on Cisco.com and/or Cisco Partner Central
