Cisco Looking To Make Things Right With West Virginia 182
alphadogg writes "Cisco has offered to 'take back' routers it sold to West Virginia if the state finds they are inappropriate for its needs, according to a post on wvgazette.com. The offer is in response to a state auditor's finding (PDF) that West Virginia wasted $8 million — and perhaps as much as $15 million — in acquiring 1,164 ISR model 3945 branch routers from Cisco in 2010 for $24 million in federal stimulus funds, or over $20,000 per router. The auditor found that hundreds of sites around the state — libraries, schools and State Police facilities — could have been just as suitably served with lower-end, less expensive routers."
Worth more than any car? (Score:4, Insightful)
A router?! A computer that is dedicated to the purpose of moving data along a network path and/or deciding which network paths based on some rules and protocols.
Maybe I'm missing something here, but it seems to me one of the industry's biggest shams is the gross overvaluation of Cisco networking. Is it really so much better than all the others or are they cloaked in so much brand naming and the hallowed process by which people become "certified" that people forget what the actual purpose of Cisco's stuff is?
Re:Worth more than any car? (Score:4, Informative)
Both, depending largely on the particular devices in question. In recent years, general-purpose CPUs have gotten so fast and buses so efficient that a quad-core Xeon running a Linux-based routing system (such as Vyatta) can allegedly handle 10G line speed for a few ports, and PCI cards are widely available for DSx and other interfaces that used to require standalone routers. That said, you can't do line-speed 10G to 720 ports without serious custom hardware, and while Cisco's stuff is still overpriced for the capability compared to HP or Juniper, it's not the sort of outrageous ripoff that the ISR series is.
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The lowend cisco devices are just general purpose processors, and usually not even very highend ones at that. Their firewalls are the same too, generic low spec x86 servers that will routinely have a fraction of the processing power of the servers sat behind them.
It's only the highend that's worth having, and really highend routers are quite a niche market.
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Skipping the former-Linksys-style low-low end, the ISRs have an unusual hybrid processing strategy; most routing in even a 2900 is done in custom hardware rather than on the processor (which is, IIRC, a PowerPC 700-series), which couldn't handle the throughput that the ISRs can. This does have the advantage of lower power consumption/heat and thus greater reliability, but if someone starts producing a generic TCAM-based forwarding plane that can be programmed via OpenFlow [wikipedia.org], Cisco's low-end lunch is eaten.
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Sure, a modern x86 (or even ARM) CPU is overkill, but that's not the same thing as saying it doesn't make the most sense economically. It's the same reason that manufacturers use identical PCBs for whole lines of motherboards and graphics cards even if the lower-end models leave half the pads empty: It's cheaper to waste a bit on overkill than to make a special-purpose product that requires different tooling/NRE. Compare what an entry-level Ethernet-only ISR costs to the x86 computer you'd need to do the
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And if it dies then I have to live without pr0n for a day. In industrial and business settings, that's not often acceptable.
I want to work where you work.....
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Cisco claims they were instructed to provide a quote for routing devices with features like, "redundant power supplies", and just provided a list of the devices that qualified. The state denies these requirments.
Put simply, they put together a sheet with 1,164 of the same exact device. One for every location, and wrote off the gross oversizing to future-proofing. That meant a big municipal facility would get one of these $20k machines, which was probably unnecessary, but the one room shack they call a "libr
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Re:Worth more than any car? (Score:5, Informative)
You apparently have never dealt with government RFP's, you have to meet the specs and have no input on them or visibility as to what they are for. They specked a single device that could run voip with PSTN fallback, wan acceleration (WAAS is cisco's version of that same), and an embedded managed switch with POE. The device they came back with is the only one that fits all those requirements. The issue squarely lies with the people that wrote the RFP.
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You apparently have never dealt with government RFP's,
You do know that it is possible, via bribes and lobbying, to steer RFPs.
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The problem is that the many of those sites were getting fiber out there. The state wanted a single device that could handle both the legacy T1's and the new fiber connections. Cisco really ought to have told them to go with whatever their cheapest T1 model is these days and then replace the router when the fiber is actually installed. Cisco is certainly to blame for not doing anything to help out.
However, the state is certainly to blame for not letting someone with a little bit of experience take a look at
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Cisco really ought to have told them to go with whatever their cheapest T1 model is these days and then replace the router when the fiber is actually installed. Cisco is certainly to blame for not doing anything to help out
I have not looked into the matter at all but there may have been some budgetary consideration for spending all the money at once. None of this justifies spending so very much money.
Re: Worth more than any car? (Score:2)
Absolutely. Cisco products are premium, and while it might look like less expensive products can do the job, you'll regret not having a top tier product in the end! Spent the extra thousand now and save time and headache later.
- Monster Marketing Team
Re:Worth more than any car? (Score:4, Insightful)
Looking at Cisco from a hardware perspective, yes they are overvalued and there are less expensive, comparable options out there.
However, I will say a few things in Cisco's defense - I've worked with Cisco, Dell PowerConnect, ProCurve, Avaya and Nortel -- hands down, when I do run into problems, Cisco is the easiest to troubleshoot for. Mainly finding documentation/community help is much easier. Finding technicians that actually know what they are doing is easier.
The other thing I would like to say is that Cisco is not always as expensive as people want to portray them. A lot of time, things like West Virginia happen - the options aren't investigated properly, and you end up with a 20K router... A great example is before I got to my job, they were buying all 3550 switches for the wiring closets.. We didn't need a layer 3 switch in a closet, so we started ordering 2560 (the next gen model in that series) and significantly cut costs.
Another example of ours, we had implemented Cisco Wireless in one of our locations, but for another location were sold an Avaya on the promise that it performed just as well and would be cheaper. The later proved true - but by a small margin. Performance and support has been an issue since day 1. Trying to find engineers inside Avaya that know their own devices like a comparable Cisco engineer is few and far between.
The last thing people don't realize - you don't always need a smartnet.. We don't order them for all our wiring closet switches anymore - we just keep our latest round of switches on SmartNet. Cisco Catalyst does have a LIFETIME warranty on the hardware... The same thing that HP Procurve tries to sell customers hard... Core switches, we absolutely keep on 24/7 4 hour Smartnet ... Wiring closets, and branch routers... nah... we can just keep a spare or two, they are cheap enough. Replace when needed, send back for lifetime warranty...
With this said, I'm not always rosy on Cisco. We did a VoIP project about 3 years ago, and going with another vendor (Mitel in our case) gave us significant savings. I'm just saying that they get the overvalued label a lot, and yes, if you are just looking from a hardware perspective yes. If you are looking at the whole training, support, community and logistics angle - Cisco definitely has the leg up on any other networking company.
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you don't always need a smartnet
Try downloading software without it. You might have a hardware warranty, but that doesn't include software updates.
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There are perfectly good Cisco routers available which can handle the West Virginia requirements, you just need two routers instead of one. The combined cost is much much lower than the cost of a 3945.
If West Virginia had gone with Juniper the story would have been exactly the same -- except with Juniper the choice would have been between a J-series which is close to EOL and at least as expensive as a 3945, or an MX series which would have been even more expensive.
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I'm guessing a considerable chunk of that 20k $ will have been for deployment, configuration and subsequent support. IANANE (Not A Network Engineer) but in typical situations in software engineering, the hardware costs are pretty low compared to the wages for the programmers, architects and maintenance crew.
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A free market doesn't preclude stupid people or irrational brand loyalty.
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They send you a summons to come to court and if you don't show up THEN they come with the guns.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_and_Elaine_Brown [wikipedia.org]
They show up with guns. This incident was a prolonged siege that took place in NH. They're not poster children, especially if you heard their interviews on local radio, but none the less, it proves the point.
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In a sense, they're the networking industry's redmond. If you're not getting 40% off from list you're not doing very well. And, of course, they sell industry certification that does much what redmond's certification does: Generate an army of vendor lovers that have been taught the answers that generate them the most money are the right ones.
The difference is that the "Cisco"CNA/CCDA/CCNP/CCDP/CCSP/CCIE certifications aren't "cisco" only. I'm a BCNE. The Brocade test could be passed by anyone who could score a 90%+ on CCNA. There was a "Cisco to Brocade" test I took. There wasn't a single question on the test that was Brocade specific. Cisco pushes EIGRP every chance. Brocade has FSPF for an STP replacement/enhancement, but I didn't have a single question on it. The command line is identical, aside from some things you can pick up from c
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I have no idea why this is modded flamebait; it's quite accurate. Cisco's N-series exams are about half Cisco-specific UI and behavior and half generic networking issues (switching, routing, etc.), and the D-series are about 90% generic (network organization, capacity planning, QoS). Even most of the Cisco-specific UI knowledge is pretty widely applicable; many vendors copy enough of it that it's about like moving between Linux and Solaris.
Cisco does tout EIGRP, but my "internal" exams gave about equal we
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And the reason I was modded flamebait is that I bashed MCSE. Which is funny, becaus
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Lucky you. There's still plenty of special-purpose gear that can't speak anything but RIP (a number of satellite frontends, for example). I've never seen it in an office or generic ISP network, but embedded devices can get out in the weeds fast.
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what, tftp a second image to flash, select the boot, and reboot is too hard for you? Or are you talking about logging into CCO? CCO has screwed me many times. I've had 3 IDs, all deactivated because I'd move from a company where I was a user, to a reseller, then back to a user.
Maybe he's talking about money?
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It's always about money.
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the right thing (Score:3)
For whatever the reasons Cisco makes this offer, it's the right thing to do. Just as sucking the Federal teat (hey, it's just bidness, everybody does it) was the wrong thing to do. To really make things right, they'd also offer to find the state suitable routers, at cost, and set'em up as well.
If I was the state, I'd be taking a close look at conscientious civil servant who approved the original deal. "Misappropriation of public monies" has a nice ring to it on a résumé.
Re:the right thing (Score:5, Insightful)
. To really make things right, they'd also offer to find the state suitable routers, at cost, and set'em up as well.
Cisco's not a charity -- the management who approved the mistaken design, and the firm that designed and selected inappropriate router choices, should have to deal with this.
It's not Cisco's job to stop you from buying equipment that can do more than what you need it to do right now.
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Yes it is. As a trusted vendor and supplier it is your duty to ensure the client is purchasing what they need, not what they want.
Nonsense... it's your duty as supplier to supply what your customer ordered.
It's first and foremost, the network designer's job to not overspec the requirements.
In fact, if you supply them just what they need, their costs may go up 2X, as what they need changes, than if they got the bare minimum that they need, plus additional resources for expansion.
Preposterous !! (Score:2)
Cisco was caught red handed !
Before the auditor report came out, did Cisco volunteer to do whatever it wants to do now?
If Cisco did, I'll applaud Cisco for doing the right thing
If Cisco didn't do nothing, and pretended that nothing wrong had ever been done in this $20K per router for library deal, before the auditor report became public, hey, Cisco wasn't such a nice guy afterall !!
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Not in formal English. The plural 'moneys' is commonly used in finance and law to indicate differing types of money (bills, electronic transfer, etc, or differing currency such as USD, pounds, and yen), money from multiple sources, or in different instances.
It's best to check before correcting someone in public.
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It's best to check before correcting someone in public.
Why? In case 'anonymous coward' does harm to his reputation?
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It's OK; I used the term for it's old-timey flavour, because I like it, and I've seen it used in several places in law. I haven't looked it up - too lazy on this sunny (where I live) Sunday morning to look it up in OED and such; I seem to recall it being a normal term of use 'long about colonial times and on into the 19th century. For all I know it may still be in current use in some areas.
As for reputation (gmhowell, following post), I don't think I have one, unless it tend towards 'flake' or 'dimwit'; n
The key is who you sell to (Score:5, Interesting)
I am willing to bet that no serious tech person had anything to do with this and if they did that they are Cisco certified up the ying yang. Just a guess but that the decision to purchase these came from very near the very top and the person was totally chuffed to be running a multi-million dollar project and was convinced that their tech wienies would be way out of their "depth" on this one.
Assuming some tech guy did protest they were probably told that their suggested routers were mere toys and that to play with the big boys that you needed serious hardware.
One of the greatly overlooked solutions is that your networking demands are so small that quite old solutions can be very effective. As long as the system can be remotely administrated you would be hard pressed to buy old hardware that didn't meet the rest of the system's requirements. 100,000 users you need the big guns. 100 users you probably need one step up from a home router.
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with the exception that even locations with 100 users will need to be managed in a statewide system comprising thousands of users. so it's worth a little more dough up front to make the system as homogeneous as possible, so that it's easier to manage remotely.
Cisco looking for federal stimulus money (Score:3, Informative)
Cisco, and others, were specifically looking for government pork: http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/40380 [networkworld.com]
Cisco is looking for about $1 billion in federal bailout money, according to a report in the Raleigh, N.C., News & Observer. The company expects the U.S. government to fork over $47 billion to high-tech.
Bruce Klein, a Cisco senior vice president, is charged with making sure Cisco gets that share of the money. Cisco can't receive it directly, but only through projects tied to local and state governments that are financed by the stimulus funds, the N&O reports.
So Klein put together teams across Cisco to identify business opportunities with local and state government agencies and other public sector organizations.
Cisco is not alone in looking to capitalize on the influx federal stimulus funds. General Electric and IBM are also lining up stimulus-backed government contracts, the N&O reports.
But should companies shipping jobs to offshore facilities and contractors be eligible to bid on contracts financed by federal stimulus funds?
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But this is also a company that is holding off transferring money from overseas back to the US to avoid paying taxes on it.
are they forgetting something here? (Score:2)
Installation and labor?
Did that not get built in to the bid?
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Installation and labor might be covered in the monthly recurring cost of connectivity that Verizon is supplying.
Take back at full price? or a low used price that (Score:2)
Take back at full price? or a low used price that you can get more for them on e-bay.
$20k router, can someone explain the cost? (Score:3)
How exactly does a router cost $20k? Granted this was in 2010, but how exactly is it that expensive? Special government price? How much would it cost someone else to buy that router?
And honestly, it's time to check all the books of all the states and start punishing the people who overpriced and sold stuff to the government, and also punish the idiots who accepted those prices and purchases. Corporations needs to be put in check.
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Saying "a router" is like saying "a computer" or "a car"; they're not all the same, and while you can get "a computer" for $300 at Best Buy, you probably wouldn't blink at seeing a price in the mid 4 figures for a decent server. The beefy ISP or big-corporation-datacenter routers can quite easily go for 6 figures. Apparently, in this case the $20k figure was a combination of a bad RFP that demanded an all-in-one device (ports on routers are much, much more expensive than the same ports on switches) with a
Oops! We got caught! (Score:2)
I guess we have to give the money back now, and pretend our hand ended up in your pocket by accident. You believe us, right?
Should Virginia settle with a "take back" offer? (Score:2, Flamebait)
Methinks Virginia should sue Cisco for FRAUD
$20,000 a router for library?
What is Cisco taking the citizens of Virginia for? Suckers??
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Cisco is only offering to take them back because the cost of taking them back and reselling them is way less than the cost of the bad publicity of a government agency whining that they spent way too much on a big-iron router for a library with two computers...
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I agree... Maybe someone should look at WV's IT Networking staff. What a waste of stimulus money.
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I can't comment at all on WV, but my experience is that most IT staff, incl. specialized or "specialized" IT staff, don't have much influence over such things.
A general trend in the industry is to de-prioritize internal expertise, esp. more specialized expertise, and to depend on outside support, esp. as it becomes more specialized. Where there is still expertise within internal IT staff, their concerns are easily ignored.
In some organizations, the people who make the final decision often have no technical
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Re:Should Virginia settle with a "take back" offer (Score:5, Informative)
The requirements were that the sites had legacy T1's and similar and were being upgraded to fiber. Therefore the router had to have both legacy interfaces and high performance. That combination is awfully expensive and the 3945 is not an unreasonable choice.
It would have been much cheaper If the requirements had allowed for temporarily having two routers on the sites until the legacy T1's were taken down or alternatively allowed for an extra visit to the site to replace the router.
Trying to avoid an extra trip to each site is not stupid. Requiring both legacy and high speed interfaces is not stupid. Going for a unified platform is not stupid. However, a joint meeting with the pre-qualified bidders would likely have revealed the potential cost savings of making a compromise on the requirements. Alternatively, an independent consultant with just a little experience in the area should have spotted it.
The same thing happens in many of bids, not just in the IT sector. Seemingly reasonable requirements together mean that only very few vendors can bid and that they need their most expensive solutions to handle it.
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Or they could just have waited until the day of the upgrade to fibre to install the new router?
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Have you tried to do ANYTHING at a remote site based on waiting for the PHONE company???
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My guess is that they were integrating all the old lines into one network along with the new ones, so someone would have had to go to each site to make that happen anyway -- and installing a new router could easily be required for that. But yes, perhaps those sites could have waited a bit longer before joining the new shiny future. Maybe the contract with the old provider had ended or something silly like that.
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Thanks for the explanation. I'm glad to have learned something that helps me to understand stuff I don't know about.
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When you have to sit at the Capital and pick a box that will work for every one-room library 100 miles away with many different installed networks.. And it all has to be drop shipped, configured and ready to install. Mistakes like over-spec are easy.
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A single device should be cheapest.
Why? T1 routers these days are legacy devices with very few units sold. Of the few units shipped, most are likely low-performance devices like the 1900. If you buy something non-mainstream, it is usually more expensive than a mass-market item.
You are completely right about the ASR 901 though. It would have been a much better choice than the ISR 3945. However, the routers were purchased in 2010 and it seems the ASR 901 was not announced until 2011.
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Re:Should Virginia settle with a "take back" offer (Score:5, Informative)
I work in government too and more specifically in WV in the office where this occurred. I'll tell you what happened to the bid process. The incompetence of the state purchasing division is what happened. Their process is so painful and long that state agencies do everything they can to avoid using them. Even the former governor Joe Manchin got caught stringing contracts to avoid them when he was in office. I've had contracts languish over there for over a year.
In this case, an existing contract the state has to purchase minor items with Cisco was used for these big ticket items. So technically it was bid out. It just wasn't bid out for these routers. The agency got dinged for this misuse of the system and the spirit of the law.
Having said that, the whole process here in WV needs to be overhauled. It is too complex and way too lengthy to be useful especially when the funding is on a tight timeline like the stimulus funding was. That complexity and duration is what makes purchasing something to be avoided. It is only human nature to try to avoid the pain. I don't have a choice but to use them and dread it every time I do.
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I suspect it's more about the negative publicity than "Please don't sue us". Cisco has incredibly deep pockets (mostly cost they sell $20k routers to 2 person part time libraries), and could tie anything like that up on court till the cows come home.
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Well considering this was one of the recommendations from the auditor's report:
Re:Should Virginia settle with a "take back" offer (Score:5, Insightful)
Government contracts don't work like that, You bid to meet the requirements, if you can not tick off every box as requested it is good by!
If you handed in a contract and it said "we can do as you requested and it will cost $15m, but if you do this it will only cost $2m" your submission may be thrown out, as its not your job to tell the government what to do. Government contracts are made to sound fair, but in reality it usually means the little guys got 0% and the big guys going to *have* to mark up to cover what the government thinks they need.
Re:Should Virginia settle with a "take back" offer (Score:5, Insightful)
Government contracts don't work like that, You bid to meet the requirements, if you can not tick off every box as requested it is good by!
If you handed in a contract and it said "we can do as you requested and it will cost $15m, but if you do this it will only cost $2m" your submission may be thrown out, as its not your job to tell the government what to do. Government contracts are made to sound fair, but in reality it usually means the little guys got 0% and the big guys going to *have* to mark up to cover what the government thinks they need.
THIS. I spent many years bidding equipment into the Education marketplace, and many, many, MANY times I had to meet bid specs that made no technical or financial expense. The mechanism for asking to have the spec revised is nonexistent or dangerous (as in, your company is dropped from consideration for trying to tamper with the bidding process). All through coverage of this story, I've never seen enough of the actually bidding process to make a determination - I've have to read the paperwork. But I strongly suspect Cisco did absolutely nothing wrong. They simply made the decision to make money for the company (however much), rather than making nothing.
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That's not what the legislative audit found. They found the following:
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It's not Cisco's fault... That West Virginia IT didn't know how to do their jobs! Somebody in the state installed that and signed the Purchase Order.
I work in IT and even 75% of IT people don't pay attention to what they NEED when they sign these big orders. My boss has "forgot" to transfer product licenses we own to new systems he last three upgrades. And that's FREE stuff we keep missing... And the vendor routinely is in such a hurry they pass it right along... Again, free upgrade money for them when that
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Read again, Cisco sold them and it is Cisco offering to take them back. You did read that right?
Of course not, why would anyone read about an issue before they comment.
GOVERNMENT IS THE PROBLEM HERE (Score:4, Funny)
We need to eliminate monopolistic, nany-state actors, like the "State Auditor" - who's sole purpose is meddlesome interference and disruption of a free-market system.
This case is a great example, illustrating that the enlightened self-interest of all parties will ensure a fair market of desired outcome, if we remove the coercive influence of Government.
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"WHOOOSH!"
Re:Should Virginia settle with a "take back" offer (Score:4, Informative)
It's not an uncommon arrangement. Cisco sold the routers to WV but the transaction went through a sales channel (in this case Verizon) to complete the deal. It was Cisco sales engineers that speced it out, drew up all of the particulars (model numbers, etc) and handed the deal off.
Re:Should Virginia settle with a "take back" offer (Score:4, Informative)
Ahem, from the article:
" State auditors concluded that Cisco's sales staff showed "wanton indifference to the interest of the public." "
Seems pretty clear to me.
Re:Should Virginia settle with a "take back" offer (Score:5, Interesting)
You know, if you are buying something and have no clue what you need then this is what happens. They should take a long hard look at whoever decided to buy these things as they are the ones responsible for wasting taxpayers' money. Cisco is on the hot seat right now but if you went through what states buy line by line I'd be willing to bet big money that you'd find a lot more stuff like this. When people spend other peoples' money there sometimes is a tendency not to worry about it.
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Geez. You no, for all intensive proposes, your just picking on are grammer. If you has a problems with are education system just right a letter. You'd feel better than.
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"in" and "on" are prepositions, idiot, not pronouns.
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It's "IN the hot seat", not "ON the hot seat".
What is it with you Americans and pronouns? As, that, than, then, you don't seem to understand what simple words like that mean.
'Sense' instead of 'since'.
'Rediculous'
'Moran'
What the hell happened to your education system?
I sit on chairs, not in chairs. fucking wanker foreigners that sit on cushions and shit...
Well, over here, in America, they have chairs we sit ON during class. Guess it must be harder to pay attention then sitting in a chair. Question, is the chair upside down when you sit in it? I mean, how do you get in a chair? In between the legs?
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Really? You sit in a seat? How do you do that? I've always sat on top of them never inside them. Silly me I didn't even know it was possible.
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Remember Business School and MBA is not the same as Project Management.
The WTF question of the day is WHY??
CISCO LOOKS TO AVOID CRIMINAL LIABILITY (Score:2)
Better headline, right lede.
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We need to fix that. It's obviously too confusing to Americans to have two "Virginia's" on a map. We need an extra star for Puerto Rico that wants to be a state... That will save millions buying new flags.
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It seems that Cisco, WV, and the press (all of it) are amongst those who don't remember that.
Are you having a stroke?
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Salespeople as nannies (Score:5, Informative)
I know I'm probably gonna get modded down for this, but what the heck....
Since when is it the responsibility of a company to tell customers what exactly they need? To use the famous Slashdot car analogy, if I am in a Lexus showroom and I am buying a car just for the sake of doing my usual daily stuff. I'm not a CEO or a VP trying to impress my company employees, I'm not a Hollywood star trying to do the same, I'm just someone from the street who's totally clueless on cars, and while I could just as easily have walked into a standard Toyota showroom, I happened to walk into one that sold Lexus.
Now, is it the moral duty of the sales guy there to tell me that I have no business buying a Lexus, and should instead look at a Camry? The parents suggestion seems reasonable, except that we're now expecting salespeople to sell people what they need, rather than what they want. Since when is it the role of salespeople to spoonfeed customers? What next - someone in Safeways who's checking out a coke being told that it's bad for him by the checkout clerk? Or being told not to buy gourmet bread from the store's bakery since that's more than what he needs, and instead being told to make do w/ standard items in the breads section.
In the above case, I understand that people shopping for the government of WV didn't have a clue. But that's where they could have used consultants to advise them on what to shop for. As it is, various governments make use of IT outsourcing services from various companies, and can easily ask them to (for a fee) advise them on the most appropriate equipment to buy, and from whom: WV could have done likewise. People look at middlemen as a scourge, but sometimes, when the stakes are high, it makes sense to use them to determine how to extract value for money. Like normally, I wouldn't bother asking someone how to shop for a computer or even a car. But if I were shopping for something I was unfamiliar w/, I'd either do the research myself, or if I was still not confident, I'd ask people I consider better than me at it how to go about it. Seems like this is something obvious that the WV government should have done.
Anyway, since Cisco has decided to do damage control in the PR perceptions, they might as well offer alternative replacements, as opposed to just cash, for overpriced equipment.
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I don't think your car (shopping) analogy holds up.
First off, the State of WV certainly has an IT division somewhere. They don't need a consultant to explain routers and so the clueless car shopper doesn't follow.
Rather, this is more like the state's purchasing agent for the motorpool, who has long experience with cars and maintenance and such, being given a whopping great big check and told to go buy some cars for state employees to run around in. He looks at the check, divides by the number of cars need
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I would say "it depends" based on what the seller knew of the buyer's use case. If the seller didn't know, then it had no moral duty. If it did, then, it had a moral duty. Obviously, most businesses aren't going to do the moral thing, but that is merely a societal convention we've come to expect. We don't actually have to accept that it is OK for business to act in a wholly amoral fashion and in fact, we don't. Our air quality would look like Beijing's if we did.
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Since it was a part of their contract as well as the law in WV. ( See: http://www.legis.state.wv.us/wvcode/ChapterEntire.cfm?chap=05a&art=3§ion=33D [state.wv.us] )
That was the code section of WV law that the auditor's office is recommending the Purchasing Division look into.
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The truth is that this is not news. Large companies talk taxpayer institutions out of money every day,
Large companies talk other large companies out of money every day too. It's the way it's done.
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Cisco was selling to Verizon, they are a phone company, selling to the State.... That has got to be some kind of record for waste.
You'd have to be a DoD contractor selling to Haliburton during the Bush Administration to get more wasteful!
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The thing is though, it's the higher ups who make the decisions and THEY don't know any better.
Who in their right mind would let some CCNA Sys Admin with 30yrs of experience make a recommendation on buying Cisco Routers, when you could have some PHB whose having lunch with the salesperson?
There are capable people that probably did voice their objection, there just isn't any benefit for the company or decision maker to act on that objection.