6/6/2005 -- Earlier this year, Cisco Systems Inc. kicked off a major security offensive, using the RSA Security Conference as a forum to outline its own ambitious product security strategy.

Since then, analysts say, the report from Cisco’s security salvo has reverberated throughout the networking marketplace, with competitors scrambling to outline similar initiatives. One upshot of this is that Cisco’s market-leading position is more secure than ever. “Cisco continues to maintain a dominant leadership position in the LAN switching and routing markets, and its drive to integrate LAN infrastructure with holistic enterprise security has kindled the market with competing solutions,” says Joel Conover, a principal analyst for enterprise infrastructure with consultancy Current Analysis Inc.

This doesn’t mean Cisco can afford to coast, however. According to Conover, the company’s competitors are equipping themselves to compete more aggressively with the networking stalwart. “Cisco faces increasing pressure on a number of enterprise fronts including security, switching and routing. Kingpin competitors such as Check Point have launched broad solutions strategies that directly compete with Cisco’s own security architecture,” he writes.

Arch-rival Juniper Networks, too, has become a security force to be reckoned with, says Conover—thanks to its J-series routers. “Cisco was able to minimize the immediate impact of the J-series by responding with a sweeping update to its own branch office portfolio, one that reinvigorates Cisco’s branch portfolio and largely removes the performance stumbling blocks that Cisco routers were well known for,” he explains. “Nevertheless, Cisco faces significant challenges as new, highly agile competitors nip at its heels.”

Cisco does have a formidable advantage in at least one respect: the success of its Network Admission Control (NAC) program, which has a roster of 15 industry partners—including heavyweights IBM, Microsoft, McAfee, Symantec and Trend Micro. He sees NAC as a “strong differentiator over competitors that have paired with only a single posture assessment vendor.” Of course, Conover notes, most of Cisco’s competitors couldn’t have kicked off a program as ambitious as NAC: “Cisco’s size and its clout in the enterprise have given it a high degree of muscle with which to steer the industry in the direction that it wants.”

Elsewhere, Cisco’s overall market leadership continues to be unique in at least one respect, says Conover: It doesn’t always have the fastest or lowest cost solutions. “[I]t has staked its claim with non-stop reliability, availability, and a world-class customer service organization. Enterprises vote with their dollars, and Cisco is the majority winner in the enterprise infrastructure market,” he says.

Conover points to Cisco’s R&D foresight during the economic downturn, which he says has started to pay big dividends now that the IT spending market has recovered. “Cisco used the economic slowdown of 2003 to establish a technology leadership position with its enterprise and commercial product lines, launching several switching product lines that gave it an early advantage in key markets, and following up with add-ons to those product lines which contribute to Cisco’s momentum and overall positive perception in the enterprise market.” -Stephen Swoyer