Network Ninja

Cisco acquired Linksys back in 2003 and the Linksys brand has been around in some way or form since then, kind of, I haven’t had problems with the product myself but have had logistics problems with the brand and this comes from up-channel from various distributors where they can’t promise due dates and shipping from Linksys.

This is a problem for the Linksys brand because although the brand as a whole has a great price point for Home, Home Office (SOHO) and Small, Medium Business (SMB) Market segments the availability sucks and not being able to promise delivery or give an indication of delivery makes using the brand as a plausible solution pointless. While an Enterprise customer might be willing to understand and “deal” that no stock is kept in a Emerging market of their class of products and that the lead time to delivery is longer that understanding is lacking with SMB customers where deals are lost on cents and the ability to start installation tomorrow.

There was talk about a year back from the channel and some of my networking buddies that the Linksys brand would be integrated into the Cisco “stable” for good, meaning that the Linksys brand would phase out totally and only one would emerge. There were obviously two views to this; while one said “Great Cisco all the way” and the other said “Linksys is a strong brand on its own, why kill it?”.

Be that as it may the first steps of the brand integration process has started. How this whole change management process will work is that soon the “Linksys a division of Cisco” will become “Linksys by Cisco” with Linksys and Cisco sharing as much product space and font size and finally only “Cisco” will be on the packaging and product. This process happens over years to get customers use to the idea and “new” packaging and branding and is the eventual process after the companies have assimilated into each other and adopted each others cultures and views.

Wasn’t around back in the day but I suppose the Catalyst Switching platform followed the same routine as this. I know that the IBM and Lexmark Printing and Imaging System did this back in the day.