揭穿思科的神话第五部分:“思科在总拥有成本方面领先”

凯文·詹宁斯

2017年8月4日

思科经常声称它可能会收取更多的费用(一点点)?!)的网络交换机比竞争对手, 但如果考虑到所有的事情, 思科在总拥有成本(TCO)方面领先.  Really?

Wikipedia defines Total Cost of Ownership as “a financial estimate intended to help buyers and owners determine the direct and indirect costs of a product or system.”  TCO is a financial tool that places a single value on the complete costs associated with the acquisition and operation of an item or system, 包括可能被认为是硬成本(资本支出), 维护和操作,  软成本, 其中最重要的是训练.  Here is a simplified yet reliable TCO formula that belies Cisco’s claim to offering the lowest TCO:

TCO =设备成本+维护成本+运行(电力、冷却等).)成本+培训成本

评估总拥有成本

我们已经讨论了“思科的税收，这与它对设备收取的价格溢价有关, 例如, 阿尔卡特朗讯企业收费, 在本系列的其他部分中.  While we have not delved in great detail into price comparisons of Cisco’s maintenance versus others, it is common knowledge in the industry that Cisco’s services are far-and-away the most 昂贵的 and the least discounted of any networking equipment vendor.  One K-12 education customer commented that Cisco’s Smart Net is “gold plated and blessed by Tibetan Monks” (i.e.那一定是因为他们的收费!). 

关于电力消耗和冷却的运行成本, 这个问题并不是一成不变的.  在这个舞台上，供应商往往会跳过另一个, depending on where they happen to be in a technology refresh cycle at any given time, 一个人可能会在一个季节里比别人有一点优势，然后就会突然转变.  总之, most vendors are successfully striving to render their offerings ever more economical from a power consumption and cooling standpoint.  As such, this needs to be evaluated on a case by case basis pitting each vendor’s proposed configuration against that of the others.

说到训练, this is what Cisco counts on to offset its massively overpriced products and services.   它的论点不仅没有说服力，而且完全不准确.  The dominant presumption in Cisco’s claim about TCO (aside from their general attitude of “Who are you gonna’ believe, 要么是我，要么是你的眼睛看着真实的数字?” and Obi Wan’s “these are not the prices from the other vendors you are looking for”) is that personnel trained in Cisco are readily at hand and those knowledgeable of other vendors’ systems are not ubiquitously available.  虽然这有点过于简单化了, let’s grant Cisco its point—at least that there are many Cisco trained people out there.  I think that it is self-evident that there are more technicians trained on Cisco than on any other vendor’s networking equipment.  There’s more Cisco equipment out there than any other vendor’s equipment, after all.  It might not even be a stretch to surmise that there are as many people trained on Cisco as there are on all other vendors’ equipment combined.  我们都应该感谢思科在网络方面培训了这么多人.  谢谢思科!

Having granted Cisco its contention that there is a deep bench of trained people out there, however, the next part inherent in Cisco’s claim simply cannot be granted or substantiated in any way.  具体地说, Cisco, 销售人员的脸上满是可鄙的恐惧, 把所谓的"大力士"看得太大了, 几乎不可能, 颠覆性的, 昂贵的, 桥太远(双关语), certainly-beyond-the-aptitude-of-your-networking-professionals’ prospect of learning how to configure and maintain another vendor’s equipment.  这种假设, 很容易被许多在思科的食槽里吃饭的人所接受, 是明显可笑和荒谬到可笑的地步吗.  Yet it is all too easily assumed by otherwise highly intelligent yet remarkably unsuspecting customers every day.  来吧，大家! 认真! Do you really think that your IT staff would have a hard time learning another company’s networking equipment?  如果是这样，你可能找不到合适的人!

The reality is that we regularly see technicians steeped in Cisco readily and easily pick up on our technology.  那些同样聪明又有创造力的技术人员, 熟练掌握思科网络技术, 轻松适应配置, 故障排除和维护由ALE设备组成的网络.  How?  Because the syntax of the command lines is quite similar as are the fundamental concepts underlying the networks themselves.  人脉就是人脉.  The majority of the learning investment that has been made in one becoming proficient in Cisco technology is transferrable to learning our technology, 以及大多数其他网络供应商的技术.  The alleged Mount Everest climb of learning another vendor’s networking wares is patently false!

思科在TCO方面领先吗?

这让我们在评估TCO计算时得出以下结论:

设备成本思科的股价几乎总是比其他公司高出至少20%, 包括啤酒, 它的价格是它的2到5倍.   请参阅本系列以前的博客 Part I, Part II, Part III, and Part IV.

维护成本: Cisco’s Maintenance costs are nearly always at a significant premium to that of ALE, 一般都是高出10%到两倍.

运营成本在某些情况下, Cisco’s switches are less efficient than its competitors and in other cases more efficient.  在苹果与苹果之间进行比较时，我们通常比思科更有效率, 但是因为在给定的比较中，这两种情况都可能发生, we’ll consider it a wash and recommend that this be evaluated on a case-by-case basis using the specific configurations under consideration.

培训成本: Cisco has the advantage here if it is assumed that the staff is already trained on Cisco and that it must learn another vendor’s equipment.  一个受过培训的思科员工要熟练掌握这些技能到底需要花多少钱 , 例如, 啤酒设备?  ALE offers a training course specifically designed to leverage one’s prior knowledge of Cisco’s command line comprised of 5 days of lecture and lab work.  第2天, 大多数人都惊讶于使用我们的设备是多么容易, and with rare exception students leave at the end of the week with a substantial and reliable working knowledge of our equipment. 

TCO概述

总而言之，以下是TCO比较的结果:

思科在TCO方面的领先地位是另一个思科所宣扬的神话!  与它虚假的声明相反, 除非使用思科的计算方法，否则思科在总拥有成本方面并不领先, 这就意味着思科的疯狂说法取代了实际数据.  But that’s not the universe that I inhabit, and it ought not be the one that you do either!