Cisco Simplifies SDN Marketing to Enterprises

Cisco Systems (CSCO) is reorganizing several of its enterprise products to better suit the software-defined networking (SDN) trend, simplifying things for current and potential customers and hopefully making its simpler for channel partners to sell its products.

Now available in four different suites, Cisco’s SDN products include:

For Cisco, it’s an important step in simplification from a company that has frequently had a complicated list of SKUs. For years, the vendor has been working to make it simpler for partners to do business with it, especially as competition has heated up. Cisco has been suffering lately, along with many others in the networking space, and posted a year-over-year eight percent decline in overall revenue in the second quarter of 2014.

And much of the decline, as well as a slow erosion of its market share in the networking space, has to do with the changing industry landscape. SDN has blindsided several vendors, and it’s taking its toll on existing product lines.

Longstanding competitors—and even technology partners—are threatening Cisco’s networking market share with their own SDN solutions. Add in the SDN startups, and the entire networking industry is facing a period of upheaval not seen in the last decade.

Don’t count Cisco out, of course. In the networking space, it’s still the big guy—and one of the most experienced of companies. Take a look at the list of top networking vendors and compare it to the late 1990s, after all. Cisco’s still here, but many of the big boys of the time are long gone—gobbled up by the up-and-comers or simply faded away into shadows of their former selves.

Creating Cisco ONE suites will not only simplify Cisco’s product lines and marketing, but also has the effect of pushing its ONE SDN platform. A smart move by Cisco, which will likely see its ONE platform pushed even more into the market via its network of channel partners.