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Here’s a bit of news that will give you a good scare this Halloween—effective November 2, Cisco will raise the price on older generation Catalyst 3000, 4000, and 6000 switches.
We all know that the older equipment gets, the longer it’s been on the market, the more available it becomes. Parts are easier to acquire and more engineers become experts with the technology. Therefore, the older equipment becomes, or the older a product line becomes, the lower its price should be. Not so, says Cisco.
The Catalyst price hikes are a clear effort to push users toward purchasing latest generation equipment, as the pricing for the newest models (ie: the Catalyst 6500 Supervisor 2T engine and the Catalyst 4500 Supervisor 8E) will remain the same. But when your applications are up and running and your infrastructure is built on 6000 series switches that work great–why would you pay to upgrade? And if one switch needs replacing, are you prepared to pay up to 67% more for older equipment?
Switches that will incur a cost increase are older machines like the Catalyst 6500 Supervisor 720 and the Catalyst 3750 and 3560 products. Cisco confirmed the price increases in a statement given to Network World.
“There are no price increases to the new Cisco switching products that have been recently announced, including the Catalyst 2960-X, 3850, 3650, 4500E with Sup 8E, and 6800, which offer greater functionality at either the same or lower price,” a Cisco spokesperson said in an e-mail to the publication. “There is a slight price increase for very small subset of older Catalyst models that now have a next generation option available to customers.”
One Catalyst 6500 card currently selling for $15,000 will sell for $25,000 once the increases take effect—a price jump of 67%. The new “replacement” model sells for $20,000, still 33% higher than the current cost of the older card.
Check out this price chart that indicates the cost increase for the Catalyst 6500 switches below. Compared to the market value of the same part numbers sold by CentricsIT as of 10/30/2013, you can see for yourself what kind of deal you can get on new and refurbished Cisco products. Please note that CentricsIT pricing fluctuates with the market, but these numbers are valid for 30 days.
We’ve seen this time and time again from the OEM—pushing end users toward newer equipment by attempting to cut off older equipment. This time, instead of taking the older equipment off support, they’ve resorted to these price increases that don’t make sense. We’ll say it again—older equipment should cost less over time, not more.
If you have Catalyst switches in your data center that are affected by Cisco’s price increases, talk to the experts at CentricsIT. We stock brand new or refurbished Cisco Catalyst switches and deploy these machines in data centers around the world for a fraction of Cisco’s cost. We source equipment globally and pass our savings on to you. We can place a portion of your infrastructure, or even the entire data center, under support through our industry-leading maintenance arm: CentricsIT. We’re one of the country’s fastest-growing companies for a reason: because we see IT differently.
