Can someone get fired for staying with Cisco?

In reading Michelle McLean's blog today I was led to a great article by Jim Duffy over at Network World.  For a long time I have said that though the old adage of "no one ever got fired for buying Cisco" may be true, I also question whether anyone gets promoted for buying Cisco.  Jim takes a similar tact asking "can someone get fired for staying with Cisco?" 

Jim's article highlights two schools who have recently switched out some Cisco gear for other vendors. One school in NC seems to have taken out some Cisco switches for NAC switches from ConSentry.  Interestingly, though the school apparently had a terrible experience with Cisco's Clean Access (now called NAC appliance, and frankly who hasn't) and was given a cold shoulder by the Cisco team, they still have only replaced a fraction (about 20%) of their network switches with ConSentry gear (still a sizable deal for ConSentry and proving the adage that some NAC vendors can get fat with the crumbs from Cisco's table). In fact the school still considers itself a "Cisco shop" and their IT guys says "I wouldn't give up Cisco, especially at the core. I don't think there is anything out there that could beat a Cisco router and a lot of the core switches".  I ask, how many times do you have to be burned before you wake up and smell the coffee.  They take your money and charge a premium, deliver products that don't work and don't give you great support unless you spend more and you are still committed to them?  After this guys experience, why isn't he looking at substitutes for the rest of his Cisco gear? I guarantee he will find them. And if he doesn't look at other options, why isn't his job in jeopardy?

In fact the 2nd school highlighted does exactly that. St. Francis High School is replacing virtually all of its Cisco equipment with HP ProCurve gear.  In case you don't know, HP ProCurve is probably the fastest growing vendor in the network market and is clearly positioned as number 2 to Cisco.  What got the St. Francis folks to finally give up the ghost on Cisco was ProCurve's lifetime warranty, industry standard, open architecture, support and price.  They are going to be 95% ProCurve.

These two studies show the problem in competing against Cisco.  Too many folks are just too willing to put up with less and take the perceived "safe way" out to stay with Cisco.  There are too many good choices out there for anyone to have to settle for less and it is time the IT world realizes it!