HPE To Acquire Juniper Networks For $14 Billion - Slashdot

HPE To Acquire Juniper Networks For $14 Billion

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• This article is about Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company, which has had nothing to do with that printer company (HP Inc.) since they split apart in 2015.

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• Re:

  Tell me more about what you don't get along with Cisco. There are plenty of reasons you might choose not to use Cisco (cost/value being a huge one, licensing, etc.) but from a technical standpoint they are still the standards-bearer of enterprise-grade networking equipment. I teach networking as well as being a practitioner so I'm genuinely interested in hearing what people do and do not like about different vendors.

  • Cisco is great if you live completely in a Cisco environment. Out of all the major players, they tend to be the least compatible with other vendors -- mostly because they like to invent their own protocols (or Cisco versions of standard protocols) and use them as default. You can also turn on the standards version of what you are trying to do -- but the tooling will fight you, and often times those are the first to have bugs.

    Cisco also retires their platforms very quickly as well. Some of their switch platforms might only be in the market for 4-5 years (and support for no more than 5 years), so they like to forklift a LOT more than other vendors. Juniper usually gets about 6-7 years out of their platforms, Extreme gets about 10, and HP closer to 10 as well.

    Smartnet is also something people complain about a lot as well. The hardware is cheap (or if you ask nicely, the sales guy will give it away), BUT the maintenance will cost more than the others. When other vendors do firmware + hardware support for life, Cisco still socks you to keep support, even if you don't call in.

    I teach networking as well and deploy networks. I certainly teach on Cisco gear (and base a lot of my class on the ICND) because that is what employers still want -- even if they aren't a Cisco shop.

    • Re:

      That's a fair enough commentary. Regarding the training piece I always tell my students we teach Cisco because 1) they probably have the most complete networking certification program available, 2) 90%+ of what you learn is transferable to any other networking equipment vendor you just need the syntax, and 3) it's what employers want regardless of what they run (see points 1 &2).

      You're absolutely right about the proprietary protocol bit and pushing them. I would defend Cisco a bit on that though because

    • Re:

      Cisco "retired" their end point routers associated with their 2018 billion dollar Secure Cloud boondoggle retroactively so that their "End Of Support" date was very close to their "First Sale Date". The few organizations that were early adopters of their cloud paid a high price in dollars and chaos. It quickly became difficult to even find these devices mentioned anywhere. The few channel partners that sold this approach all wound up with egg on their face, some of the clients were fairly large organizat