Part
01
of one
Part
01
Cisco Networking: Overview
Cisco's networking business, also called as Cisco Digital Network Architecture (DNA), has an annual revenue estimated between $51 million and $100 million. Cisco DNA is crucial to the company's efforts to define the future of network management through intent-based networking (IBN). Its key competitors are Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), Huawei, LiveAction, ExtraHop, SevOne, Colasoft, and Corvil. We have outlined our findings below.
RELATIVE IMPORTANCE
- Cisco DNA is crucial to Cisco's efforts to pioneer intent-based networking which will
- current virtual networks using different VPN, VLAN, and segmentation.
- NetworkWorld identified Cisco DNA as "Cisco’s big push for the future of network management".
- Carl Solder, Senior Director of enterprise switching technical marketing at Cisco said, “The idea is to simplify that whole process by creating virtual networks in a few clicks and having policies applied consistently. We express our intent and let the controller - DNA Center - figure out how to deploy that configuration across all of the devices under its control.”
- Cisco launched DNA Center as the primary interface for its ambitious strategy for intent-based networking (IBN).
CURRENT AND FUTURE PRIORITIES
- Cisco's current priority for Cisco DNA is its deployment in the Internet-of-Things (IoT) industry.
- These include adaptation and implementation of new innovations such as IoT networking platforms, IoT developer tools, IoT architecture blueprints, and IoT partner training.
- Cisco senior vice president and general manager in IoT Liz Centoni said "By providing scale, flexibility and security, we’re turning the network into a secret weapon for our IoT customers. And, with a new DevNet IoT developer center, we’re empowering thousands of partners and developers around the world to build upon our IoT platform."
- Cisco DNA offers its customers a "single pane of glass view" across IoT environments, as well as developer tools to build upon its networking platform.
- In its Cisco Live 2019 last month, the company made it clear that its future is software-defined networking management.
- The launch of its IBN technology jumpstarted "Cisco’s path toward a more dynamic multidomain architecture" which is hinged on its Cisco DNA center capabilities.
- "Cisco’s ongoing shift to software-defined networking management" will include natively building security upfront into network architectures for better integration and performance.
- Cisco's future priorities for DNA Center include bringing "networking provisioning and management to the software layer" as it moves the industry from traditional command line interface towards networking programmability.
KEY DECISION MAKERS
- John Bateman is the current Director of Digital Network Architecture (DNA) and Mobility Services at Cisco.
- Ryan Clabaugh is the Director of Cisco Engineering Services and speaks about how Cisco DNA Center simplifies network management.
- Carl Solder is the Senior Director of enterprise switching technical marketing at Cisco and speaks about Cisco DNA's network management capabilities.
KEY COMPETITORS
- Cisco provided a head-to-head comparative analysis of its own networking business against 2 main competitors it identified: Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and Huawei.
- Compared to Cisco, HPE lacks encrypted-threat detection across networks and is VLAN-based.
- Compared to Cisco, Huawei offers limited security groups-based policies and has no user segmentation in its networking architecture.
- HPE has an estimated $30.88 billion annual revenue, with no public information for its networking segment under Enterprise group.
- Huawei reported that its Enterprise business (which includes its networking segment) reached CNY74.4 billion in 2018, or $10.81 billion USD.
- Gartner's 2018 report " Magic Quadrant for Network Performance Monitoring and Diagnostics" highlighted the following direct competitors to Cisco's DNA Center: LiveAction, ExtraHop, SevOne, Colasoft, and Corvil.
- LiveAction's annual revenue for its network business is estimated to range from $11 million to $25 million.
- ExtraHop's annual revenue for its network business is estimated to range from $50 million to $100 million.
- SevOne's annual revenue for its network business is estimated to range from $51 million to $100 million.
- ColaSoft's annual revenue for its network business is estimated to range from $11 million to $25 million.
- Corvil's annual revenue for its network business is estimated to range from $26 million to $50 million.
- Cisco's network business' annual revenue is estimated to range from $51 million to $100 million.
RESEARCH STRATEGY
We have provided an overview of Cisco's networking business, also called as Cisco Digital Network Architecture (DNA). We have provided its relative importance, current and future priorities, key decision makers and key competitors. However, the size of the division relative to other business units was not available. We employed the following strategies below.
First we researched Cisco's annual reports and publicly available documents. Cisco's FY19 annual report for 'Revenue by product category & service' shows no segment information for Cisco DNA. Instead, only broad categories were shown with revenue data for Q3 2019. These are Infrastructure Platforms, Applications, Security, and Other Products. Due to the broad categorizations, we could not make a direct comparison of Cisco DNA division relative to other business units. The top 3 business segments may also contain different divisions disproportionate to their overall categories' current revenue size.
Next, we tried to triangulate the number of employees but LinkedIn has no preexisting individual profile page for Cisco DNA with its own number of employees. Search results for employees (Cisco "Digital Network Architecture (DNA)") were interspersed with other job titles such as 'Wireless Network Consulting', 'System Engineer', 'UX Architect', etc. The number of results were also disproportionate for a relatively new and minor division against Cisco's overall number of employees (22,753 against 74,200).
Lastly, we tried to determine the number of employees through business intelligence resources including Crunchbase, Hoovers, Owler, ZoomInfo, CSIMarket and others. No preexisting information for Cisco DNA is available online. The only available business information is for Cisco overall. While we found Gartner's estimated revenue for Cisco's network business ($51 million to $100 million), we still could not make a direct comparison to other divisions within the company as the publicly available categories were too broad (ex. Infrastructure Platform $22 billion, Security $2 billion). Therefore, we have addressed all other aspects of the overview in our response.