Customer TCO Exposes True Costs of Cisco

Just in from the field: "I had a customer call yesterday and said they wanted to take a closer look at Nortel because they're getting crushed on Cisco maintenance fees for voice. They have about 3,000 IP phones and are paying $400K per year in software maintenance ALONE. They're up to 22 servers supporting 3,000 phones, messaging, and a contact center application."

Looks like the Cisco strategy is to lowball on the hardware (both from a capacity and price perspective) and then hit the customer hard on the back end with more servers, more software maintenance fees and of course the Cisco Energy Tax.

I'm telling customers they need to look at a 5 year TCO with product, maintenance and energy to show the entire picture.

Then there are no surprises and you can apply the savings to business enhancing investments.