Cisco & Pancho

Everyone always talks about Cisco but they almost always forget to talk about his sidekick Pancho. You can't have one without the other and in contrasting worlds of voice and data the same is true today--you can't have one without the other.The perils of businesses are often the people running them or sometimes worse, the ones who think they're running them. The management and social gurus call this group dynamics or allude that people do strange things in groups and that it's perfectly normal. While some of the individuals may not be normal, it seems that the outcomes are--good or bad and even predictable.

Then thinking about Telecom as a business or a good Western with cowboys and shootouts in this case, I'm not so sure that we can Blame It On Cisco entirely without giving some credit to their sidekick. The outcomes, however you peg them, are I think probably as close to normal as anything else, but unless you live in a desert without any technological abounding presence then you'd probably agree that Telecom as a business is changing and the shifts are amazing but not surprising.

As a small tribute to Cisco from Pancho:

* You've taught the world "marketing in motion" * You recruit all top players * You've gobbled up viable startups like candy * You reversed engineered telecom, made it better and built an empire of your own * You weren't happy taking the lion's share of IP telephony on the station side, now you want the trunk side too

Whether or not you agree, one thing is foreseeable. SIP is the straw that may not break the camel's back (Telcos) but it's certainly going to create another shift in revenue away from the PSTN. The IT gods aren't only laughing they're already counting their trinkets of gold.