Though it didn’t make many headlines, those in the IT Managed Services space relying on Cisco are acutely aware that their increasing lead times on products peaked in February.  While it’s true that in the past some resellers have had shortage issues, we don’t see that happen with large purchasing services that manage their volume and ensure product is in stock and shipped quickly.  However, as of last week we were actually quoted 4 months for a firewall from a multi-billion dollar partner.  We were able to go to another partner for the same equipment.  However some of Cisco’s channel partners with reseller agreements or Managed Service Providers without diverse IT purchasing operations are feeling some pain.

After experiencing this, we stocked up on some ASA firewalls just to ensure that if something happened with a client’s network infrastructure we could address the issue expediently.  The only article I found referencing this (from the UK interestingly enough) has some jabs from Watchguard expecting sales to pick up due to Cisco’s inability to deliver.

Last year Dell had the same issue, struggling with some assembly engineering problems on new products.  It was taking 4 months to get a laptop and indeed a large number of clients gave other vendors a try.  If the incumbent vendor performed well, they didn’t switch back.  As a managed services provider focused on quality we aren’t prepared to  consider a switch from Cisco for network infrastructure projects, but we will be watching the situation closely.