It’s All About Choices
Today, companies have more choices than ever when it comes to which networking equipment vendor they choose. While Cisco still reigns as the No. 1 manufacturer of network equipment, more and more end-users are expanding their vision to consider a host of others, including Juniper, Brocade/Foundry and Extreme. Brocade’s $3 billion acquisition of Foundry, for example, creates a bigger and more worthy rival for juggernaut Cisco. The union melds the complementary strengths of each company to create greater options for building enterprise-wide networks.
Increasingly, there also are more viable channels for buying top-quality network gear. Thanks to a burgeoning secondary market, affordable choices are prevalent and well-established companies have large volumes of inventory to meet a wide range of production network, testing and sparing requirements.
NHR warehouses more than $200 million in equipment—at prices up to 90 percent off OEMs’ list—including all the most popular gear from Cisco, Juniper, Foundry and Extreme. So whether you’re looking for a dozen Cisco Catalyst 6500 series switches or one Juniper M-series router, we can get it to you overnight—typically a much faster response than the four-to-six week wait with most new equipment from the primary channel.
When I speak with customers, I always hear a common theme: time is money and waiting is unacceptable, regardless of whether they’re dealing with a planned network expansion or an unexpected network outage. So if an unforeseen outage occurs, don’t let the OEM answer the call with a pricey, forced migration to the latest generation gear just because they typically stock only a small amount of past-generation products. Instead, the secondary market will provide an immediate remedy as well as cost-effective relief for your beleaguered budget while also avoiding additional training or ramp-up.
The power of choice now also extends to maintenance and support. Instead of leaving your network edges unprotected in budget-crunched times, more organizations are embracing highly economical alternative support programs. As result, gear that no longer requires firmware or software upgrades can be safeguarded at huge savings over SMARTnet offerings.
The advantages go beyond saving money. When one NetSure customer recently called for assistance, we could not unconditionally determine whether a faulty card or chassis was the cause of the problem. So we overnighted him both pieces, covering all the bases while guaranteeing restoration of network operations. He was impressed; we were just doing our job. But he knows when it came to purchasing quality networking equipment and support at a price he could afford, he made the right choice.
Tags: Brocade/Foundry, Cisco, maintenance, Maintenance and Support, NetSure, network outage, network support, outage, Secondary Market, SMARTnet, support