4/3/2006 -- Cisco Systems Inc. last week announced the end-of-sale and end-of-life dates for its Cisco 1700, 2600 and 3700 series multiservice routing platforms.

Cisco says the end-of-life dates -- which give customers another six years to transition to new platforms -- could affect as many as 5 million devices.

Customers affected by the EOL dates are bound to be unhappy, but analysts say Cisco is handling the product phase-out responsibly. "Cisco is responsibly retiring aging products from the market with a tried and true mechanism that gives customers six years to develop and implement a technology migration plan," writes Joel Conover, a principal analyst for enterprise infrastructure for Current Analysis. So where will former 1700, 2600, and 3700 customers go? Conover says Cisco is steering these users toward its newer ISR portfolio. "Cisco already has nearly 1 million ISRs in the field, but there are 4-5 million more Cisco routers in the installed base, all potentially eligible for upgrades," he points out.

To a very real degree, Conover concedes, Cisco needs to bend over backward to accommodate its existing installed base. "Cisco's product retirement mechanism is one of the most open and customer friendly in the industry, but nevertheless, the impact of retiring critical core enterprise WAN routing platforms like the Cisco 1700, 2600 and 3700 routers presents clear competitive opportunity as customers face a product migration decision point."

Or, to put it another way, with about 90 percent of share in the enterprise routing segment, any disruption in Cisco's status quo provides a possible opportunity for avaricious competitors. "[E]very move [Cisco] makes has a much greater potential for negative impact than positive. When you're at the top, it's much easier to fall down, and Cisco is at the top of this market," Conover points out. "Cisco has fortified its position through the introduction of the ISR routing platforms, but competitors have also responded to Cisco's moves in the enterprise space with new products and integrated solutions as well."

Conover thinks it could be a buyer's market as 3Com, Juniper, NetDevices, Nortel, ADTRAN, Carrier Access, Converged Access Corporation and others compete to woo vacillating Cisco customers. "Any one of those vendors has the potential to compete with Cisco for that replacement business," he points out. -Stephen Swoyer