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Switches: Who's On First?: Page 2 of 2

HP responded the next day, characterizing the Catalyst announcement as “too little, too late”, according to Mike Nielsen, director, solution marketing, HP Networking. “Contrary to Cisco’s claims, the performance of HP’s comparable products (9500 switch, 'which ignores HP’s recent announcement of the A10500 Campus Core line of switches') is twice as high, if measured correctly. The price comparisons are also meaningless – Cisco’s math is based on an upgrade of a product (Catalyst 6513E) with a very limited install base versus a completely new installation.”

He went further, writing us that the market is losing confidence in Cisco’s ability to execute. “Market share losses by Cisco reflect customers’ reaction to paying a premium for legacy architectures on outdated platforms.” For instance, Cisco has more than 70 management tools listed on their website whereas 'HP’s strategy is to offer comprehensive network management in a single pane-of-glass, integrating all essential and high-value network management and monitoring functions into a single administrative tool. The bottom line, says Nielsen, is that Cisco’s “no forklift upgrades” statement is misleading to the market and their customers. 'In reality, platforms from Cisco are priced in some cases 50% higher per terabit than higher-performing offerings from HP (at list price).'

Cisco's response came in a blog from Scott Gainey, director of marketing, borderless network, writing that his company 'emphatically stands behind the claim of 3x the performance at 1/3 the price when you compare a simple upgrade of Catalyst 6500 versus HP’s A9500.' He adds that Cisco would be perfectly happy to do a comparison with its replacement, the A10500, but despite it's May launch, 'it still hasn’t been posted to their configuration tool, nor does it appear anywhere on their networking product pages. So is the A10500 real, or is it just marketing until it gets off the factory floor?'

As for HP's claim that the E-Series has only been around for months, it's been in the market for seven years and is in 80 percent of Cisco's installed base customer networks, continues Gainey. And to add injury to insult, he adds that according to Dell'Oro, nobody measures market share gains on a quarterly basis, but rather should be done over a three-year period. According to the research company, HP’s share claims are simply “misleading.”

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