Loyalty Tips The Scales

The demand continues to spawn start-up companies and embolden existing ones to try and move into formerly uncharted waters. High-speed switch vendor Juniper Networks, for example, isn't established enough to be included in this year's Annual Report Card (ARC) survey, but having added a variety of networking solutions and a security practice while expanding its target market into the SMB space, it figures to be the new kid on the networking block next year.

"Juniper is coming at the market with a slightly different spin, especially since the acquisition of NetScreen," says Ken Batorski, president of Woods Networking Services, a Cisco Gold partner in Farmington, Conn. "They're coming to people like us and looking for SMB customers who aren't as committed to Cisco, and their SSL/VPN solution could help them get a foot in the door."

For now, the ARC rankings in this sector are confined to Cisco, 3Com, Nortel, Enterasys and Hewlett-Packard, in that order. "Cisco has the market share and the mind share," Batorski says. "They offer a broad enough product set and a complete enough solution to make people not want to switch away from them."

But these rankings don't always match up with market-share numbers. Case in point: In August, HP announced that its ProCurve Ethernet switches had ascended to the No. 2 position worldwide in terms of number of switch-port shipments. Yet, according to the ARC numbers, either ProCurve is an exception or its lack of appeal to the channel hasn't yet had an influence on its ARC score. HP's networking infrastructure products--which included many devices and solutions other than ProCurve--finished last in the sector almost across the board.

Meanwhile, 3Com, which in 2002 ran neck and neck with Cisco in the race for networking dominance, ranked first in many criteria, including quality of technical support, communication, solution-provider program and overall partnering (in which it was tied with Enterasys). But 3Com received middle-of-the-pack scores in most of the other areas, and its ongoing financial struggles may limit its ability to stay near the top. The same goes for Nortel, which combined continuing internal turmoil with mostly so-so scores, tying with 3Com for second place overall. Enterasys showed strength and posted solid numbers in several criteria--including postsales support, sales partnering, managing channel conflict, revenue/profit potential (tied with 3Com)--and tied for first in the overall partnership ranking.

As is often the case, the loyalty solution providers have toward Cisco tipped the scales in its favor. The company finished way ahead of its competitors with an 81--one of the highest overall loyalty scores in the entire ARC.