No one gets fired for buying Cisco!
December 07, 2023
No one gets fired for buying Cisco!
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Modules Used
- Cisco Catalyst 3560 - CX
- Cisco Catalyst 3850 Series
- Cisco Catalyst 6800 Series
Overall Satisfaction with Cisco Catalyst Switches
They used to say "no one gets fired for buying IBM", the saying now extends to Cisco. Not the cheapest, but very reliable, well supported, and decent feature set. They are easy to get engineers to support, have good turnaround on hardware spare parts and have a solid user base for design review and ideas. We extensively use Cisco 48 Port switches as access switches across our offices.
- PoE
- Switching
- Routing
- Cost
- Open source protocols
- Less packaging
- Reliability
- Performance
- Simplification
- Cisco AnyConnect
The number of AnyConnect licenses exploded overnight due to the lockdowns - the Cisco team were awesome in that they handed out a heap of temporary licenses to get us going - with the idea that we'd figure it out once things settled down. It was an awesome 'get out of jail free' card - the team were and are still very appreciative of Cisco for helping out in a time of need.
AnyConnect allowed our team to VPN in and work remotely, we were already using it, but the use exploded over night. Given our configuration - it meant that staff had full access to the systems and services that they needed to do their work, as if they were working from the office.
Different usage patterns on our internet links - naturally if people are working remotely we'll have more ingress traffic on our internet links. We also had to 'educate' our workforce about how the VPN works - that if they are working from home, maybe pulling / pushing a large amount of data from local (to the office) file shares to their laptop might not be the best way to work.
They weren't the cheapest, but they had the greatest skills available in the market, they were reliable and they fitted well into our environment. The sales team were thorough and comprehensive, although not much spin needed - they are rock solid, everyone knows how to use them, our engineering team are well versed (and qualified) to operate and configure them.
Do you think Cisco Catalyst Switches delivers good value for the price?
Yes
Are you happy with Cisco Catalyst Switches's feature set?
Yes
Did Cisco Catalyst Switches live up to sales and marketing promises?
Yes
Did implementation of Cisco Catalyst Switches go as expected?
Yes
Would you buy Cisco Catalyst Switches again?
Yes
Cisco Hybrid Work
- Working from anywhere (e.g., coffee shop, airport)
- Working from an office or other company space
- Working from home
We've always had Cisco AnyConnect as our CPN client / solution and it's worked well. I've enhanced endpoint security scans when connecting to ensure that when our staff are connecting they are doing so securely, even if working from a coffee shop. We're largely complete in our implementation, it's more about making services more efficient to be run from anywhere (e.g. migrate to cloud)
Cisco AnyConnect has been really reliable and manageable for rolling out to our fleet. I've used other open source / free VPN clients, which work well - but just don't seem to be as solid at AnyConnect. The flex up in licensing from Cisco was very welcomed during the lockdowns - it showed that Cisco wasn't going to stop us from doing business.
- Slack
We use WhatsApp as well, its not an officially supported IT platform, however our users have naturally migrated to it - it's hard to get them off. We're largely a Microsoft Teams / Share Point organisation. Slack is used in the event of an outage / backup collaboration platform. I'm sure there are other platforms used, but not with the support of IT.
Cisco Catalyst Addtional Questions
- Distribution switching
- Layer 3 routing
- Power over Ethernet (PoE)
- Integration with Other Systems
- Ease of Use
We're a Cisco networking shop, so we know that it would fit in well with our other networking hardware. Generally when we choose which model of switch to use, it'll be able to port throughput and density - as the Cisco Catalyst Switches that we were using were just for access / distribution - the feature set isn't really important (besides PoE).
There is extensive literature and guides available online, they are pretty straightforward and should be configured in line with your individual needs. General / generic advice would be - don't do anything too complicated / difficult to explain, or apply the kiss principle (keep it simple stupid). Oh, and always opt for an extra power supply, you don't want to have to scramble when one dies.
No we didn't