Cisco to drop the Linksys brand

WanBoy67

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/07/30/cisco_linksys_canned/

Sorry, that's a really bad idea! Nice way to knock a couple of $000s of the Cisco brand though.

TheFORCE

Sisco wont lose any money from this, they will still be making routers for the home users and small bussiness with the same user interface. only the name will change, i dont think that will affect their share in the market that much. besides, the name sisco is on all linksys routers as it is anyways.

WanBoy67

When Linksys were taken over it was a smart decision to keep the brand and its customers goodwill and associate by name to enhance the Linksys brand, but the packaging makes it fairly clear. Linksys are Linksys - Cisco is Cisco. Linksys is a division of Cisco, they just own them.

They will loose Linksys goodwill, that looses them money. Then Cisco will have to build a consumer brand, that will cost them a lot of money to do also. Goodwill the size of Linksys is measured in tens of millions of dollars. You can't just replace the brand and think everything stays the same. Linksys and Cisco have separate brand identities too. Linksys=cheap Cisco=expensive. What is Cisco now? cheap and expensive. Cisco can't proclaim to be the Rolls-Royce of network equipment if it also uses it's brand on cheap consumer grade product. That devalues their Cisco brand and certifications also. Id love to see a consumer find something on the Cisco website, that'll be fun to see!

I know why they are making the change, they want to overhaul the Cisco certifications and seem to want to compete with Microsoft. They say they want 2-3 million Cisco certified, Microsoft has over 2 million MCPs according to their statistics. It makes sense why they created the CCENT, they want everyone to start out with that network certification because they'll at least be using consumer grade Cisco equipment and might work their way up using Cisco business and corporate equipment.

But hey, it'll be fun to watch!

RTmarc

Two things:

1) Cisco carries products that are both cheap and expensive. If you look at some of their newer products like the Catalyst 500 Express switches, they are relatively cheap.

2) Cisco is not the Rolls-Royce of networking equipment. They are good but not the best. There are many products out there that will run laps around anything Cisco puts on the market. FortiNet, Extreme Networks, HP Procurve, and Juniper are just a few examples.

JDMurray

This is really sad new for me, as I really love the Linksys name and gear--especially my WRT54GS v3. Linksys is just down the freeway from me in Irvine, CA too. I can't see how Cisco thinks this a good move. Cisco must not be in touch with the hobbyist wireless networking market. I can only wait and see how this move will turn out

RTmarc

http://blogs.cisco.com/news/?CMP=ILC-001

Will the Linksys brand become Cisco?

There have been some questions lately about whether the Linksys brand would be folded into the Cisco brand.

Here is our response: "Linksys consumer and SMB products will continue to be marketed under the Linksys brand and co-exist in the market with Cisco branded connected home products over the near term. We will continue to examine our branding strategy going forward (as we have to date) and make changes if and when these changes add value to our customers' decision making processes and our channel partners."

Maybe I'm missing something but I fail to see how Cisco dropping the Linksys brand - if they do - "devalues their Cisco brand and certifications also"; especially if they are just changing the name.

royal

http://www.engadget.com/2007/07/30/linksys-branding-not-dead-after-all/

Linksys branding not dead after all

Well, it looks like Cisco CEO John Chambers spoke a little too soon last Friday when he said that the Linksys brand was going the way of the dodo -- Cisco is now saying that it will continue selling Linksys-branded products "in the near term," and that changes would only come "if and when these changes add value to our customers' decision making processes." In other words, Linksys ain't dead yet, but the axe is still mighty close.

Stotic

What is the first thing you think of when you think of Dell servers. You think Dell...cheap laptops...so they're servers are probably cheaply made as well.

A comment on one of those posted blogs sums it up well, "It is as bad as GM renaming the Daewoo to Chevrolet. Corvette then had to split and become a stand-alone brand, unable to share the same name with cheap-ass korean toy-cars."

wastedtime

Well my only problem with this is quality. Cisco brand products have been known to last years even over here in Iraq with dust caked on them and temperatures up around 130. Now I feel linksys isn't any higher in quality then any other consumer brand out there but it just isn't cisco quality. I have bought about 7 or 8 Linksys brand items and for the most part they have been good only 1 failure, 1 go a little buggy after about a year and everything else still works at 12 - 36 months old. But on there upside I have had a easy and good experience with them running Enterprise WPA2. Also while I didn't like there products requiring a PoE adapters, although they are to standard so you could use it on a PoE enabled switch.

WanBoy67

RTmarc wrote:

1) Cisco carries products that are both cheap and expensive. If you look at some of their newer products like the Catalyst 500 Express switches, they are relatively cheap.

If you compare the similar Catalyst Express 500-24LC and the Linksys SRW224P, both are 24 port managed switches. The Catalyst gives you 4 PoE ports and the remaining are normal ports. Linksys give you 24 PoE ports for half the price for a similar spec switch. Spend a little bit extra and you could get the Linksys SRW224GP with gigabit. The Catalyst Express maybe cheaper than some of the higher Catalyst product lines but I doubt many could make a reasonably business case to use the more-expensive under-spec'd Catalyst Express over a cheaper Linksys doing a similar job.

RTmarc wrote:

2) Cisco is not the Rolls-Royce of networking equipment. They are good but not the best. There are many products out there that will run laps around anything Cisco puts on the market. FortiNet, Extreme Networks, HP Procurve, and Juniper are just a few examples.

There are competitors granted (some cheaper/some better spec'd alternatives trying to gain market share) but if you compare it to cars, Mercedes wouldn't dare put their name on the cheap SMART car even though they have invested in them for years and now own them. One is a luxury brand the other a cheap inner-city run-around brand, their brand identities are completely different. Would Mercedes name be as prestigious if they used their brand name on a SMART car? Likewise Toyota & Lexus. If a large number of people with the CCENT certification use consumer grade Cisco equipment that will have an effect on the CCNA, after all it's only one exam above that and that's aimed at supporting business grade equipment. Cisco wants 2-3 million Cisco certified and the last known total is that 700,000 are Cisco certified. They are wilfully devaluing their certifications to gain market share.

As for Linksys continuing "in the near term" several product lines overlap between Cisco & Linksys so it would be reasonable to assume that Cisco will wait until it has developed products to fill the gap that Linksys will leave behind. It could be a considerable amount of time before the change happens but one thing is for sure it's definitely not just a change of badge.