Tactic 12 - Deploy Trial Gear into Operational Environment

Notes from the field.

Deploying Trial Gear Into Production

I visited a (now bankrupt) large-scale tier 2 ISP at its headquarters. I saw its deployment staging area in a strip mall near Detroit. For months, this ISP had fended off a Cisco salesperson who had been trying to reclaim a large core router that was supposed to be in the ISP’s remote test lab. Actually, this router was installed and had been operating in the production network for 6 months. There were claims of card failures that required retesting before accepting for purchase, claims of test-lab delays, budget cycle issues, etc. Before this router was returned to Cisco it had been in full service for over a year. Such a scenario would certainly keep one’s costs down.