Menlo Park, California-based Cisco Systems Inc has only had an office in Spain for just over a year, but it is already playing a prominent part in the router market. In a recent interview with ComputerWorld Espana, the director of Cisco Systems for Spain and Portugal, Fernando Reymundo, explains that after setting up the European headquarters in Paris six years ago, the company felt that it would benefit from moving closer not just to its clients, but also to its distributors in the Iberian peninsula. With this aim in mind, an office was opened in Madrid in 1993 to provide technical support and to serve as a base for marketing activities. The company operates through indirect sales channels in Europe.
Hubs market
Questioned about Cisco’s recent foray into the hubs market Reymundo states that the company’s new marketing strategy has four focuses: backbones, access routers, IBM integration and groupware. With respect to the last area, it is not Cisco’s intention to enter into an all-out war with other hub manufacturers, but we do want to have the opportunity of offering a homogeneous solution, which is as extensive as possible. We have pinpointed three important user needs: greater bandwidth, greater ease in migrating to new standards and services, and the possibility of scaling up or extending the network in a simple way, Reymundo declares. The director also points out that the company has become strong as a result of the alliances it has forged. These may take the form of distribution and technological exchange agreements, and even certain dealings with competitors, such as IBM Corp and Novell Inc. In Spain Cisco Systems has had a value-added reseller contract with Telefonica Sistemas SA for some time. With regard to the introduction of Asynchronous Transfer Mode systems into the Spanish market, Reymundo is of the opinion that this will depend to a great extent on what kind of service the telecommunications operators can offer, and also on how competitive the prices set by manufacturers will be. He is quick to emphasise Cisco Systems’s overall commitment to Asynchronous Transfer Mode, but adds that 75% of the Spanish market still wants small-sized routers. This fact leads him to question whether the majority of Spanish companies will ever require so much bandwidth.
