HP Baits Cisco Customers to Switch Switches
Hewlett-Packard and Cisco Systems were once close partners, filling complementary niches in the hardware companies need to run their businesses. Just how much that situation has changed became clearer Monday.
HP, a computing giant that has branched into networking, announced a promotion giving customers 20 percent off the list price of certain switching systems if they shift away from comparable gear sold by Cisco, a networking giant that has branched into server systems.
“Cisco has never seen this level of competition before,” says Marius Haas, HP’s senior vice president and general manager for networking, who said HP’s networking gear is easier to manage, more secure and cheaper than Cisco’s. “We’re not going to let them gain an inch in servers, and we know that they’re going to be losing in networking,” the HP executive adds.
