[ppml] Policy Proposal 2005-1: Provider-independent IPv6

[Vince Fuller]

`g
On Thu, Apr 27, 2006 at 01:40:08PM -0700, Vince Fuller wrote:

P.S. lest this message, and in particular:

> Conclusion: enterprise customers drive vendor development, sales, and all
> other priorities. This has been true since the years of Cisco, when HP,
> Cisco's first big customer, bought orders of magnitude more equipment and
> generated orders of magnitude more profit than all ISP sales combined.
> 
> It used to be said that the best motivator for development of ISP features
> was a prediction that what ISPs are using today is what enterprise customers
> will be using in 3 years. That meant that ISPs typically got those features
> a year or two after they really needed them, but at least the eventually did
> get them. It isn't clear whether the next generation of cutting-edge ISP
> features will continue to "trickle down" to enterprise users; for ISP's sake,
> one would fervently hope that they do.

be mis-interpreted: I would strike the last sentence from the above as it
does not reflect today's reality. The situation for ISPs is far better now
than when I worked for a large Cisco (and other vendor) customer. ISPs are
clearly an important part of Cisco's business and Cisco devotes enormous 
resources to serving its ISP customers and to developing features and products
which those customers require. It remains the case, though, that the original
posters statement:

> 5.	Vendor focus, in my experience, tends to be towards making
> 	the large(ish) ISPs happy and the majority of enterprises
> 	are a secondary consideration.  This makes sense when you
> 	consider that the average large(ish) ISP spends several
> 	million dollars per year with their router vendor(s) of
> 	choice, while the rest of the world is significantly less
> 	per enterprise (in most cases) spread over a much wider
> 	collection of sales representatives.  In most sales-oriented
> 	organizations (which as near as I can tell, all the hardware
> 	vendors are today), the sales rep with the largest dollar
> 	value tends to have the largest say in the feature priorities.
 
incorrectly states that ISPs are the sole primary focus of development
efforts to the exclusion or de-prioritization of enterprise customers.
That simply isn't true.

	--Vince
	(still speaking only for myself and not for my employer)