Customer Reviews

Making the Cisco Connection: The Story Behind the Real Internet Superpower

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Reading this book provides a fairly compact history of Cisco Systems ascent from a start-up to the world's most valuable corporation in less than 20 years. As best I can tell from comparing the book to interviews with Cisco executives and news reports, the data included are pretty accurate.

The only significant thing missing from this book is enough context on why Cisco has been more successful than other companies. The details are there, but the highlighting of what is significant is too light.

The essential point is that a company needs a vision, strategy, values, culture, management style, and business processes that permit it to prosper from irresistible forces and trends, regardless of how these turn out. Cisco has adhered to this perspective more than almost any other company.

The aspects of what Cisco does differently come primarily in using acquisitions to add talent and provide flexibility responses to unclear, emerging technology trends. The accomplishment here is that the talented people stay, are more productive than ever before, and fit comfortably into the Cisco culture. Hardly anyone ever does these things well.

The authors also understate the significance of how Cisco has multiplied irresistible forces. The focus on the Internet allows the company to benefit from both Moore's and Metcalfe's Laws. Because of that, Cisco has a very high stock price. That makes for low costs in acquiring and keeping top people, through the use of stock-based acquisitions and stock options. Converging technologies mean that the Internet basis allows the company to impinge on other forms of communications as the convergence occurs. All this means that Cisco has the potential to be 10 times the size of Microsoft. The key difference: Cisco is much more adept at irresistible force management.

People who want to understand more about high tech competition, how to create a successful company, and find good investments will all find this book to be valuable. I especially recommend this book to people who are about to start up a new business.

Do take the material with a little grain of salt though. As good as Cisco Systems is, they're not quite as good as this book suggests.

As a ten year veteran of cisco, I am discouraged by the misinformation presented in this book. Many omissions, factual errors, incorrect attributions are present in this book. Very few of the mistakes cisco made along the way are documented and discussed. Mistakes that lead to the formation of companies that now successfully compete against cisco like Juniper Networks. Or near misses like almost giving our source code to Microsoft. Cisco has an amazing story to tell, I am sadden to see this puff piece instead. I look fondly on most of my association with cisco, but this book does not accurately document the company and its inter-workings, it only demonstrates that cisco has one of the best image control infrastructures around.

Doing justice to what today is a $452 billion dollar company, is fundamentally a challenge, to do so in such a brief book is outstanding.

In the short time since this book was written, Cisco has passed the landmark of a 300 billion dollar Market Capitilization, as mentioned in the book, and raced right through $400 billion and even $450 billion. It is now the 2nd most valuable company in the world, second only to Microsoft, and is seriously being spoken of as a rival to Microsoft for reaching the level of 1 Trillion Dollars of Market Capitalization. If the rates of value increase as they historically have, Cisco wins.

This book has technical detail, but is not overly burdened so as to discourage anyone interested in Cisco's Story.

The book gives a clear overview of the company's history, the CEO'S who have run the company to date, and the vision of the Current CEO Mr. Chambers. Cisco has an astonishing record of absorbing 61 companies, the last time I saw a number listed, and they do so with more success than any company in History. The retention of top executives and the staff of the companies acquired, exceeds any other industry benchmarks.

Even if you have no interest in the technology, the Management of this Company is extraordinary by any measure, and has been recognized as such.

This work will give you a great deal of knowledge, in a surprisingly brief book.

Truly excellent.

This book was perhaps the biggest disappointment I have ever experienced in purchasing a book. As a loyal reader of Upside, I expected a hard hitting review of Cisco, what makes it tick and how it achieved its incredible success. Instead, this book could have been written by the Cisco PR team. Parts of it seem to come straight out of Cisco press releases. I could have learned as much or more by reading the Cisco web page. This book added no insights. It contained no interviews at all, grabbing a few quotes out of other publications. It contains no independent research, and says nothing bad whatsoever about Cisco. If this book is to be believed, every employee of Cisco is happy all the time, Cisco has never had any credible competitors, and has never made any mistakes whatsoever. And whether I believe that or not, it makes for a very boring book. Even at only 200 pages of large print, it still contains too much filler - laundry lists of executives, failed competitors, and companies that Cisco bought, with no real explanation of how any of these added to Cisco's growth.

Don't waste your time on this book. Read the Cisco web page for the fluff and find an old Upside article on Cisco for the real story.

Epilogue - I wrote the above review 6 years ago. With the power of time and hindsight, not to mention everything that has happened to the networking industry since then, I'd still rate this as one of the most useless, sloppy, books ever published on the technology industry. It's too bad someone hasn't written a good book on the real story of how Cisco became successful and stayed successful.

I really think the previous reader was being a bit unfair to the book--though I'm not a Cisco insider, so there certainly could be errors. He complained that the book didn't talk about Cisco almost giving away its source code? The biggest mistake he can think of is that Cisco _almost_ did something wrong. I found the book to not be a puff piece at all--it's definitely from an outsider's point of view. "Making the Cisco Connection" clearly delineates the processes and people that have made Cisco successful, and at least mentions their problems.

John Chambers, Cisco's poster-boy CEO, comes off as being brilliant but kind of freaky, a benevolent dictator. The book didn't gloss over the fact that the founders were kicked out, or that Cisco workers often live like droids. But it doesn't ignore the fact that most of the workers are very, very rich.

I found the Cisco story a lot more interesting than that of all the dot-com startups. After all, Cisco actually makes something. And it's been around a long time (15 years) compared to the Web companies that get glossy books.

I really enjoyed this book.

There is no free lunch but there could be free voice; and if "Voice of the people is the voice of God", Cisco will soon be handling the bulk of it. John Chambers is working and waiting for this to happen !.

The book begins with an excellent foreword from Karen Southwick and when David Bunnell starts with the main story he is at his best.

It is amazing to see Cisco's ability to acquire and integrate dozens of companies to its fold, grow at blazing speed and still maintain the core values and retain its people.

The chapters of the book are sequenced well and details on technology are explained in a manner that readers not familiar with networking are able to understand and appreciate the business strategy of Cisco.

If one believes that the internet is going to change the way we live, read about the company that has contributed so much to make this happen.

I bought this book because Vint Cerf says the Internet will go from 3.5M users today to 3.5B users in 10-15 years, and that means that businesses involved in Internet infrastructure--and especially multi-media multi-lingual narrowcasting--have a growth (or implosion) prospect on the order of 1000X.

The book tells a helpful story about CISCO's growth in 12 years, and I for one found it both well-written and fascinating. I am especially impressed by the CISCO rules for successful acquisitions, by the CISCO distinctions between core competencies and outsourced manufacturing, and by the CISCO implementation of its enterprise information system and related web sales and service sites.

As for the future, I agree with John Chambers that telephone calls will be free in the future. Arthur Clarke said this 20 years ago. Chambers' vision for a global multi-service (voice and data) offering that easily integrates wireless, fiber-optic, and other forms of transmission is inevitable, but CISCO is not necessarily pre-ordained as the dominant enterprise.

Corporate and national information strategies must have four components: connectivity, content, coordination of standards and investments, and communications/computing security. CISCO, as described by the book, has a superficial interest in encryption but does not really understand the urgency of establishing "deep encryption" that is embedded in all data (including data in storage) and unencumbered by the retarded US and European policies seeking to give their spies an easy back door to use.

CISCO also appears to be overlooking two major opportunities for future expansion: first, in leading a much broader coordination of standards such as transparent and stable Application Program Interfaces (API) that would permit the remote integration of applications and multi-media data; and second, in exploring all aspects of data classification, indexing, and visualization, both in terms of data access and automated filtering, and in terms of pattern analysis across the network.

There are so many over-hyped books on the Internet Revolution that I found this book to be a real pleasure. Whether for entertainment or for business lessons or for insights into the future, it is a solid 5.

I found this book about Cisco relatively short but comprehensive in the key elements of what makes the company a success. These elements consist of modern management, modern leadership, cutting edge business strategy and the pioneering use of electronic commerce. The most interesting parts of the book are the business strategy of Cisco buying other startups that could challenge the company with innovative technology. Also, interesting is the Cisco attitude of not buying the mythical company but a group of individual people and trying to integrate them into the Cisco culture. Of interest is the fact that most other company purchases fail. However, at Cisco they succeed and have allowed the company to remain on top. The second interesting area the book deals with is Cisco's pioneering use of electronic commerce. The book goes into detail about the Cisco electronic commerce schemes. Overall the book is well written and enjoyable to read.

Reading this book provides a fairly compact history of Cisco Systems' ascent from a start-up to temporarily being the world's most valuable corporation in less than 20 years. As best I can tell from comparing the book to interviews with Cisco executives and news reports, the data included are pretty accurate.

The only significant things missing from this book is enough context on why Cisco has been more successful than other companies, and while it may become less successful in the future. The details are there, but the highlighting of what is significant is too general and light.

The essential point is that a company needs a vision, strategy, values, culture, management style, and business processes that permit it to prosper from irresistible forces and trends, regardless of how these turn out. Cisco has adhered to this perspective more than almost any other company involved with the Internet.

The aspects of what Cisco does differently come primarily in using acquisitions to add talent and provide flexibility responses to unclear, emerging technology trends. The accomplishment here is that the talented people stay, are more productive than ever before, and fit comfortably into the Cisco culture. Hardly anyone ever does these things well. Cisco's big advantage is that it can quickly take these technologies and expand their distribution.

The authors also understate the significance of how Cisco has multiplied irresistible forces. The focus on the Internet allows the company to benefit from both Moore's and Metcalfe's Laws. Because of that, Cisco has enjoyed a very high stock price (although recently it has dropped to being only a mere high stock price). That makes for low costs in acquiring and keeping top people, through the use of stock-based acquisitions and stock options. Converging technologies mean that the Internet basis allows the company to impinge on other forms of communications as the convergence occurs. All this means that Cisco has the potential to be 10 times the size of Microsoft. The key difference: Cisco is much more adept at irresistible force management in the newer technology areas.

People who want to understand more about high tech competition, how to create a successful company, and find good investments will all find this book to be valuable. I especially recommend this book to people who are about to start up a new business.

Do take the material with a little grain of salt though. As good as Cisco Systems is, they're not quite as good as this book suggests.

But without the magical stock price growth, will Cisco be as successful? Probably not.

Could overconfidence be part of the problem? The recent slip in the company's expected rate of growth shows that the company is merely mortal after all.

Also, if you are looking for a great investment, I think you will find greener pastures in mass storage where the irresistible forces are even stronger.

Never mistake temporary alignment with powerful irresistible forces for intelligence.

Cisco has undoubtedly been the business success story of the 90's, and David Bunnell's book chronicles the company's rise from the halls of Stanford to the role of an international juggernaut very well. The authors explain the leadership techniques of the key members of Cisco's management, and they also make a good attempt to explain how Cisco has managed to stay on top of the Internet infrastructure industry. I purchased this book for its analysis of Cisco's leadership, and it didn't disappoint me. Unfortunately, the authors spend too much time praising John Chambers & Co. and not enough discussing what they did wrong, and why they might have done it. "Making the Cisco Connection" is a well-written, informative book, but I personally would have liked to have seen more in-depth analysis of the few mistakes the company has made.