By Monique Lucey
Last week’s blog looked at new and interesting issues in higher education from various Educause sessions. I was struck that none of these presentations addressed the implications of a multivendor network, and thought I would take this opportunity to introduce a guest blogger, John Gray. John is a product marketing manager at 3Com, focused on H3C enterprise brand products and in particular, on data center solutions. John recently posted this discussion about the advantages of a mixed-vendor network on the official 3Com blog.
Buyer beware of the vendor who tells you a mixed-vendor network is bad
By John Gray
I recently listened to a presentation in which an IT analyst presented a case for how mixed-vendor networks are less reliable, more complex and costlier than a single-source vendor strategy.
While the analyst made some interesting points, he failed to acknowledge any of the key benefits that a dual- or multivendor-network strategy offers customers.
For starters, a multivendor network provides enterprises with the freedom to choose.
Rather than having to adhere to one vendor’s proprietary or monolithic architectural view of the world, a multivendor strategy enables enterprises to leverage open standards‐based solutions that are aligned to a customer’s business priorities, and not the other way around. This freedom enables enterprises to choose the best possible solution, rather than having to settle or compromise for a certain product simply based on the logo on the front of the box.
Decades of standards work by industry groups such as the IETF have enabled this broad multivendor interoperability across L2/3 networks for key networking functions like switch trunking, VLANs, QoS and Power over Ethernet (PoE), to name just a few.
What is it going to take to earn YOUR business?
Furthermore, multivendor competition levels the playing field and creates an environment where competing vendors become VERY focused and innovative on how they can earn a customer’s business through aggressive pricing, value-added services and feature/product commitments.
If nothing else, this type of open competition at least keeps an incumbent vendor honest and as sharp as it can possibly be on pricing and support. In a best-case scenario, customers may learn they can save tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars.
But my (single-source) vendor keeps telling me about multivendor complexity, issues, etc., etc. …
There’s a reason they keep telling you this: There isn’t much upside for an incumbent supplier if you bring in a second vendor! The reality is that current best practices for running today’s network infrastructures apply to both a single or multivendor network. For example, establishing well-defined, open standards boundaries between the access and core network layers provides a logical demark to deploy a different vendor solution if it makes feature/function or economic sense to do so.
In fact Gartner recently published a research note around this very topic citing that: “The operational impacts of introducing a second vendor for basic network infrastructure are modest and easily handled by most organizations.” It continued: “Introducing a second vendor will reduce capital expenditures (capex) by at least 30% (and often more), while only minimally increasing operational expenditures (opex).”
I’d be interested in hearing your stance on single- versus multi-vendor networks. Which do you think is more advantageous?
