"If the vendor reps were any indication, Cisco didn't believe there would ever be competition for their product"
Familiar feeling. The explanation: there is no long-term horizon. All they care about is near-term bonus, and things that position them personally.
Companies with clearly-defined leading products are under permanent risk of being hijacked by sociopaths.
Engineers are intelligent, but we are focused on hard problems, and we are typically invested in the platform which limits our ability to manoeuvre.
The sociopaths have nothing better to do than spend all their day consolidating position, and they don't care if they have to destroy the mountain in order to take it. (Once a company has been pillaged, they can just go somewhere else and do it again.)
As an engineer, you will fight to kill this thing. But once you see it has succeeded in taking root, immediately try to get clear of it. I don't think this gets enough emphasis in our circles - we need a short phrase that captures the transition point. I've just read your blog and suggest "bed bugs".
Agreed. I think the other part of it is organizational blindness, as well. They reacted to OCS in the same manner that Microsoft reacted to the iPhone. They were the established player with a mature platform and here came along a service that did things radically different and lacked, what they perceived, as the major features that customers in that space were looking for so they simply laughed at the product. Companies certainly didn't flock to it like people flocked to the iPhone (a trick I think only Apple can pull off), but by comparison, Cisco's offering provided a far less integrated experience at a greater cost and once those back-end features got worked out (or were no longer relevant), they had a surprise competitor with (at the time[1]) a much lower price. Couple that with the fact that people are far more comfortable with making video/voice calls from a PC due to Skype (consumer) and the idea of getting rid of your desk phone[2] and taking it with you on your laptop for all of your "business phone needs" isn't so radical anymore.
[1] At the time, there wasn't even a comparison. It took far fewer servers, cheap (by comparison) licensing that gave you dial-in conferencing for the cost of the server and the call's cost (no additional per-minute surcharge for the privilege of using a bridge). I haven't priced a Cisco equivalent in a while so that may all be different, today.
[2] You can still have a phone with Skype for Business (and they're great phones from what I've seen) and many companies still pop those phones on desks. I worked at Global Crossing when we switched, though, and we required a departmental waiver to get a physical phone (to save money). People did get decent, certified, headsets, but we made the switch the way people take band-aids off and there was a lot of bleeding in the first couple of months. It died down once people got used to it and within a half-year, meeting rooms went empty in favor of calls with desktop sharing (one can multitask and no need to walk down the hall carrying your laptop). Laziness always wins. :o)
Familiar feeling. The explanation: there is no long-term horizon. All they care about is near-term bonus, and things that position them personally.
Companies with clearly-defined leading products are under permanent risk of being hijacked by sociopaths.
Engineers are intelligent, but we are focused on hard problems, and we are typically invested in the platform which limits our ability to manoeuvre.
The sociopaths have nothing better to do than spend all their day consolidating position, and they don't care if they have to destroy the mountain in order to take it. (Once a company has been pillaged, they can just go somewhere else and do it again.)
As an engineer, you will fight to kill this thing. But once you see it has succeeded in taking root, immediately try to get clear of it. I don't think this gets enough emphasis in our circles - we need a short phrase that captures the transition point. I've just read your blog and suggest "bed bugs".