Ethan & I talk about recent events in the industry and their workday. I have a head cold so apologies for the sniffles / coughs.

Topics

How much does your vendor impact your product perspective ? I wouldn’t have considered Zeus previously but this week Greg is considering Riverbed Stingray. Why is that ?

F5 products are priced beyond the reach of most people. It’s worth looking at other products because F5 isn’t “cloud ready” with their pricing. Stingray has the features that you are looking for.

Cisco Nexus 7000 to complex for serious use

Fear of Code Upgrades – more software instances solves routing problems, improves scaling and makes upgrading a lot easier. Greg is having a lot of pain around upgrading the Nexus 7000 in networks and the lack of guarantees that Cisco (and resellers) can provide.

It can takes an eight hour change window to upgrade a single NX7K and there is little certainty that it will actually work. Worse, it’s becoming more and more risky to do so since features like vPC means that devices are interlocked and “fate sharing”.

Cisco Product Launches This Week

Cisco released a broadside volley of products this week. The Cisco C3850, Nexus 6000, ONE Controller and new features for the Nexus 1000V.

We discuss these releases and the relative features and capabilities.

Cisco announcing service modules for NX7K. But virtual versions at same time, aka vNAM in NX1Kv. You can run NX7K as leaf/spine switch. Uses Nexus 5500/Nexus 2200 code base ? Supports Fabric Path.

Amazon and low margins means no sales people

Amazon’s thin margins preclude the use of sales people & fancy executives to sustain revenue. Instead, Amazon develops new products in adjacent markets ( product managers & engineers ) or adds efficiencies to existing products with better engineering or investment.

In short, sales people add no value except to sustain high margins. Amazon products don’t need explanation, customers buy because they know what they want. It’s possible that competitive sales actually help amazon since the help customers learn about the cloud products.