Vignesh Vishwanathan

TE 466
Dr. Shahbaz Shabbir
October 6, 2014

Cisco and Alliances

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The presentation and article dealt with how Cisco gains and maintains Alliances in order
to see greater business productivity and access to new markets and revenue sources.
During the dot com bust, Cisco weathered out the poor financial market by looking at
partnerships to expand their revenue source and leverage external competencies. And it
did really work for them - by the spring of 2003 they saw an increase in revenues of
12% from the Alliances.
The reason it works well for Cisco compared to some other companies is because
Alliances are supported strongly by the organization and at highest levels of
management. They also work on building alliance that brings together the strengths of
both the companies to initiate solutions in new fields and markets. Examples would
include Cisco patterning with HP to provide Starbucks with wireless hotspots necessary
for Starbucks to cater to new category of customers after the the breakfast rich. These
customers came more often, stayed longer and bought more coffee providing more
revenue for all the three firms involved.
Cisco also invests a considerable amount on technical staff to conceive and integrate
solutions, and on the marketing team to build programs that are ready to go to market
and executed well. And it all runs smoothly due to a great a partnership culture. Cisco
works on training people and cross-fictional groups on maintaining partnerships and
how it helps the company achieve its business goals. Training is also for the managers
from the partner company. This helps create a cohesive unit to tackle the issues they
were set out to.
However, how Cisco currently deals with reaching new markets was not covered in the
presentation. Of late Cisco seems to have stopped partnering, but buying up startups.
Either letting them run independently - Meraki, or by shuttering them down and
absorbing the technology and not the people - Flip video camera.
This could be because cultures of some of the new companies are pretty incompatible
with the culture of some older companies. The culture clash was what prompted Cisco
to keep Meraki separate. So there is a moving away from partnership in the short term,
but Cisco was known for its ability to create seemingly new alliances that played to their
strengths.
Among innovative technology firms, Cisco is kind of an anomaly as others within
industry like Apple and Microsoft have been bad at starting or keeping alliances. It was
mostly due to non-interest by these parties and the great difference in the work culture
within the alliance.
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