A small research paper - Thoughts about Cisco.

Dear GroupStudy community,

I'm doing a small research paper on Cisco and try to find out if they are
"evil" or not in relative to open/free source/standards, and business
practice. Eg. locking people to their product line aka the MS way.

I'm sending this mail to you guys because you are the core of Cisco (or
going to be :)).
I'm hoping that someone would be kind and share some of their impressions of
Cisco with me.

My hypothesis is that Cisco is following the best business practice in
relation to proprietary and open/free source.
To answer this hypothesis I'm trying to find out if Cisco is using their
proprietary solution when there is a better open/free alternative.

My preliminary thoughts is taken from what I have perceived, that Cisco
makes a proprietary solution to give them a edge and uniqueness in the
marked which they can harvest capital from. And when that solution has
become commonplace they switch over to non-proprietary solutions to become
more interoperable and thus stay competitive.

First, Is this reasonable observation?
Second, Are there any deviations from this trend? If so, why?

I'm very grateful for any reply I get.

Kind regards,

TSLura.

Blogs and organic groups at http://www.ccie.net
Received on Thu Mar 11 2010 - 11:55:50 ART