Tech blog Silicon Angle broke the story that Cisco was dumping HP as a preferred partner. Cisco then was forced to respond by posting a blog on its web site confirming the story with a video of Keith Goodwin SVP of Cisco’s Partner Program laying the corporate speak on heavily with phrases like:

“Change is the only constant in the IT industry.”

As the industry moves toward “collaboration, virtualization and cloud-based services…”

Cisco wants to “Align with partners who share our network-centric vision”

“Evolution of our relationship with HP”

“Top priority is our customers…amidst shifting industry dynamics”

In the middle of this discussion, Goodwin indicated that Cisco was not renewing its integrator relationship with HP—the largest company in the industry and a huge reseller of Cisco gear. This on the heels of HP late last year, nixing its Cisco Alliance Managers—my understanding is dozens of individuals out of a job whose role was to push Cisco equipment.

The other shoe dropped when OEM relationship between QLogic and HP where HP is private labeling QLogic stackable FC switches (which David Floyer wrote about last month). The word is HP is popping Cisco out as second source to Brocade and slotting in QLogic. QLogic? Yup – QLogic; which is very interesting that this adapter company is now in the middle of this rift. Supposedly Cisco wouldn’t agree to a private label deal with HP so HP said “forget-about-it” and brought in QLogic which is nowhere in the FC switch business and overnight got a ticket to the dance.

This  could go both ways…a company full of hubris shoots itself in the foot with a big partner. I’ve also seen a company back out of an OEM relationship and successfully leverage its channel to compete with the OEM (e.g. EMC/HP).  My guess is in the near term, Cisco will easily make up the couple of hundred million dollars in lost HP business but over time, HP will fine tune its model to compete with Cisco more effectively in networking.

Meanwhile, HP is playing sugar daddy to QLogic to subsidize its entrance into the FC edge switch market—where there’s hardly any competition today. QLogic is a non-threat to HP and will happily do whatever its new benefactor demands as long as it helps the company grow.

As the HP Cisco relationship unravels the race is on for Cisco to integrate its stack and maintain leverage while gaining a foothold in servers; while HP tries to integrate its compute, storage and network assets and keep the aggressive Cisco out of its server installed base.

While these two giants battle it out, keep an eye on Chessmaster Ellison as overnight, Oracle has built one of the most robust stacks in the business and has huge disruptive potential.

When asked about their biggest concerns, survey respondents listed reliability and quality of used IT equipment. In cases where the company did not purchase used IT equipment, respondents listed lack of warranties and unfamiliarity with the used market as reasons for not buying used IT.

Key Findings

Used IT Purchases
More than three-quarters (77%) of survey respondents said that their organization purchased secondary market IT equipment. The majority (61%) of IT professionals surveyed said that less than 20% of their current IT equipment was purchased on the secondary market. Our survey defined secondary market IT equipment as equipment purchased where your organization is not the first owner of the equipment including used, refurbished, pre-owned and recertified.

Close to half (46%) of the respondents expect their spending on used IT equipment to increase in the next 18 months while 47% expect their spending to remain the same. Only 7% expect their organization’s used IT equipment spending to decrease in the coming 18 months. On average, IT executives surveyed expect their used IT spending to increase by 15%.

Key Decision Factors
Forty-one percent of respondents cited lower capital costs as the primary reason that their company purchases secondary market IT equipment. Close to one-third (30%) said that the performance of new equipment vs. secondary or used does not justify the increased investment. An additional 15% cited budget constraints as the primary factor for purchasing used IT equipment.

Biggest Concerns
When asked what their biggest concerns were regarding the purchase of used IT equipment, IT professionals most frequently listed the reliability of used equipment (57%), quality of equipment (50%), obsolescence (28%) and retaining service or maintenance contracts on used equipment (26%).

Types of IT Equipment Purchased on the Secondary Market
When asked what types of IT equipment they currently purchase second-hand, respondents most frequently listed servers [less than $100K] (45%), personal computers and workstations (38%), routers (33%), other networking equipment (26%), switches (28%) and storage (24%).

Service Agreements/Fees
Companies most frequently contract with the original equipment manufacturer (44%) for service and maintenance contracts for used equipment. Twenty-one percent hire a third-party service provider. For the respondents that said they contract with the original equipment manufacturer, 26% said that their fees were actually higher for their used IT equipment compared to the fees for new equipment purchased from the same manufacturer.

Methodology

CIO magazine’s Second-Hand IT survey was administered online from June 1 through June 28, 2002. Visitors to CIO.com as well as readers of CIO Insider electronic newsletter were invited to take the survey. Results shown here are based on the responses of 164 IT and business professionals. Not all respondents answered all questions.

In terms of title, 44% of the survey respondents were CIOs, CTOs or vice presidents in charge of IT. Directors or managers of IT made up 33% of those surveyed and 11% were IT staff or IT consultants. In addition, 13% of the respondents had non-IT titles including CEO, COO, CFO, president, vice president, treasurer and director. On average, respondents reported an IT headcount of 37 and the average number of users supported as 2,643.

Survey respondents represented a range of industries including computer-related business (27%), manufacturing (15%), wholesale/retail/distribution (8%) and education (7%).

Fifty-three percent of our survey base worked at companies with fewer than 500 employees while 28% were from companies with 501to 2,499 employees. Thirteen percent of the survey respondents worked in organizations with 2,500 to 9,999 employees and the remaining 10% worked in companies with more than 10,000 employees.

When asked about company revenue, 56% reported annual company revenue of less than $100 million and 28% reported revenue between $100 million and 999.9 million. The remaining 15% reported company revenue greater than $1 billion. The IT budget represented 7% of company revenues on average.
]]> http://scalenetwork.wordpress.com/2010/02/02/save-money-by-purchasing-refurbished-it-equipment/feed/ 0 scalenetwork http://scalenetwork.wordpress.com/2010/02/01/partnership-program/ http://scalenetwork.wordpress.com/2010/02/01/partnership-program/#comments Mon, 01 Feb 2010 18:07:48 +0000 scalenetwork http://scalenetwork.wordpress.com/?p=58 ]]> We are a Reseller in the Used Networking / Telephony arena and we are looking for Sales Representatives to assist and take part in our growth. We aggressively buy used Networking and Telephony (Cisco, Avaya, HP, Juniper, 3Com, Polycom, Lucent, Foundry, etc.) equipment from End Users and Companies.

We are looking for people that are actively engaged in dealing and working with Networking / Telephony equipment (Reselling, Installing, De-Installing, Trade-Ins, etc.), primarily Cisco, but we deal with many different manufacturers.

The way it works is any deal that the Sales Rep bring in (whether we are buying or selling equipment), they get a percentage of the Sale and / or Purchase. The involvement in the deal is very minimal for the Sales Rep, as this is intended to be a Passive Income Stream.

Also feel free to ad comment or two about the website. We are here for your I.T. needs.  If you feel there is something we are doing right (or not ), please let us know so we can better serve you.

* Cisco today announced new customers, features and professional service options for the Cisco Eos(TM) social entertainment platform.

o Travel Channel, All Access Today and The Eleven Seven Music Group/Tenth Street Entertainment join Warner Music Group as customers deploying the fast-growing Cisco Eos platform. Cisco also announced a new Eos partner ecosystem program and new Eos features, including Facebook Connect integration to facilitate audience acquisition; additional customization tools to enable rapid scaling of site launches; site migration tools to transition existing communities to Eos; and member group management capabilities to enhance engagement and monetization. Cisco Eos is a hosted “software as a service” platform that enables Media & Entertainment companies to more economically create, manage and monetize social entertainment experiences built around their portfolios of branded content.

* Cisco announced that it is providing a medianet — a media-aware Internet Protocol (IP) video network infrastructure — to NBC during the network’s coverage of the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Winter Games, February 12-28. Cisco and NBC have expanded their relationship for the Vancouver Games, leveraging the best combination of video leaders to deliver the Games via an end-to-end IP video solution, from video production to content management and distribution. Cisco’s IP next-generation network (IP NGN) video infrastructure will enable real-time editing by NBC personnel in Vancouver, New York and Las Vegas, and will allow for the transfer of gigabyte-sized files of content between locations and then delivered to three screens: TV, PC and smartphone.

* Cisco, which has shipped more than 200 million consumer devices to date, continues to generate momentum with its Linksys by Cisco home networking products and Flip Video camcorders. Cisco today announced data for Flip Video obtained during the 2009 holiday season that highlights the enormous growth in video usage over the past year. There were more than one million Flip Videos uploaded through FlipShare software in December 2009. These uploads represent three million minutes of Flip videos viewed, which is equivalent to more than six years of continuous video streaming, representing an increase of 395% from December the year before. In addition, there were 42,000 gigabytes of video streamed in December, up from 525% the year prior, indicating an increase in HD video usage.

* Flip Video camcorders are pre-loaded with FlipShare software to enable easy organizing, editing and seamless uploading to Facebook Video(TM), MySpace(TM), YouTube(TM) and other video sharing sites. The latest FlipShare software also provides mobile apps for iPhone(TM), Android(TM) and select BlackBerry phones, which enable users to access their Flip Video library on their mobile phone. For the holidays, Cisco also introduced FlipShare TV which brings the user’s entire Flip Video library of photos and videos into the family room and onto the TV screen without wires, and lets them share video instantly with other FlipShare TV owners.

* At CES, Cisco will also share its vision and progress toward developing an entirely new category of video communication, called home telepresence, which uses a consumer’s existing HDTV and broadband connection to deliver a unique natural video communication experience from the comfort of a living room. Cisco will enter U.S. home telepresence field trials this spring, with Verizon as an early partner. Home telepresence field trials in France will start later in 2010, with France Telecom as Cisco’s early partner.

o IDC forecasts that in 2010 there will be 32 million U.S. households with the required broadband connection to support a high-quality home telepresence communication experience.

o In three years, Cisco Business TelePresence has transformed the way people communicate in the workplace; it is the company’s fastest-growing emerging technology.
-Reported by CNN

The benefits for selling the equipment to us is we will provide you with more value for your equipment and the turnaround time to get paid is instant versus the long and tedious process with Cisco.

Many of our customers use us instead of Cisco and take advantage of our “BuyBack” program, which provides a “credit” amount as to what we can offer for the equipment and then they use the “credit” to purchase used Cisco (or any other products) through us without any Cash Transaction taking place.

I  welcome any questions on our program you may have.

Chris Hughbanks

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http://twitter.com/scale_network

Why Choose Cisco?

Experience

Cisco has extensive understanding of designing and deployments, holding the position of the worlds largest supplier of IP telephony. With over 6 million sold world wide, Cisco IP Telephony is extremely widely deployed.

Quality

Cisco hardware is extremely reliable and Cisco has an excellent history in helping diagnose and fix any software issues with their equipment. Cisco offer 24*7*365 support which covers technical support and advanced hardware replacement. Integration With the ability to supply equipment for the whole network, not just the IP Telephony component, system integration is made much easier when all equipment is from one manufacturer. Cisco integrates many applications seamlessly across its platforms, giving a richer and more easily managed user experience.

Ease of Administration

With access to a graphical user interface (GUI), an administrator can easily manage common system changes, such as user adds, moves and changes

Why Choose Pre-Owned?                               

Affordable Quality

In these economic times, every business has to cut cost. The big question though that weighs heavy on every CEO, CIO, and CFO is “ how do we cut cost without sacrificing production and quality?” The answer is turn to pre-owned equipment. Cisco Pre-Owned Equipment is affordable quality equipment. The question that should be on every CEO, CIO and CFO’s mind is “ Can I afford not to have a top running network at 50-90% off MSRP?”

The survey, conducted by InsightExpress and commissioned by Cisco, interviewed 502 information technology decision makers from U.S. businesses of all sizes. The survey questioned IT professionals in the health care, retail, finance, government and education sectors

exert from  http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/marketwire/0561627.htm