“What is Cisco doing to address the lead time and supply chain issues that are currently affecting many of their product lines?”

I participated in the CCIE/DE NetVets event “Coffee with Chuck” this week. For those that are unfamiliar, it’s an unscripted live Q&A held at CiscoLive where some very interesting and sometimes uncomfortable questions are posed directly to Chuck Robbins and his executive team about products, services, or support from Cisco.

There were several great questions asked and answered on the spot. One of the most interesting (some might say pointed) question was “What is Cisco doing to address the lead time and supply chain issues that are currently affecting many of their product lines?”

After the initial gasps and some ridicule of the crowd passed along with a few seconds of acknowledgement and shuffling by the Cisco executive team they had some pretty good answers (in my opinion.)

Here are my notes on what was said....

Initially it was suggested that some of the possible global economic slowdown (hinted at from some analysts recently) could have a silver lining in that a slow down may allow for some catch up in terms of supply with some of the demand falling off. In fact, they said that they were starting to see better availability of parts from some of their brokers already.

Aside from commenting on the things that are outside their direct control they went on to say that internally Cisco is currently evaluating their products and the components they use. This is being done to determine which products might be competing for semiconductors and such from other vendors’ products. Obviously, this applies to other IT device vendors, but it also included less apparent competitors like cars, home appliances, consumer electronics, and other products. ?These insights, very much like the telemetry and analytics Cisco’s products provide, may point to some adjustments they could make in the short term to provide better/faster product availability while also avoiding conflict/competition for these parts in the future.

Furthermore, they are looking to incorporate this mindset into future product design where certain types of processors, semiconductors, or transistors may be interchangeable within the same product. Having several variations of these components to choose from would increase flexibility in the case of a shortage of a specific component. Also, they may be looking to make some of their platforms more modular internally to allow for more flexibility and provide more in inter-platform component compatibility. Longer term there were hints that they may look at taking more of the production of some of these components in house to give them better control of production and availability.

They did also mention that they would try to do a better job of trying to publicize more of these efforts. Everyone in attendance seemed to appreciate this, as more often than not, VARs and other partners seemed to be in uncomfortable position of trying to explain many of these delays to their customers and executive teams.

As a final quick disclaimer, these notes are my own impressions of what was said. There’s no guarantee to what’s actually going to happen or how quickly; so take it for what it’s worth. Overall, I really enjoyed the opportunity to participate in this session and I appreciated the transparency from Cisco on a very challenging issue for all of us!?

#ciscolive #colossal #netvets #cisco #leadtimes