Is price ever enough?

Both Mitchell Ashley and I are big proponents of open source software. As such we both subscribe to Open Sources by Dave Rosenberg and Matt Asay in InfoWorld. Matt posted today an article on Vyatta, the folks making an open source router.  Based upon the past performance of the CEO and their price-performance advantage, Matt wants to take bets that Vyatta succeeds.  Mitchell being a nice fellow from Nebraska, leaves a very nice comment, that this is very exciting and it would be great to hear from some end users to lend credibility to the use of open source routers.  Me, being a loudmouth from NY says, Matt, put your money where your mouth is my friend!  I will take that bet any day.  There is no way any product is going to be commercially successful against a competitor with 80% plus market share if they only compete on price. If they wanted to, Cisco could bury Vyatta and 100 others on price to drive them out of the market.  Price alone will not displace them, unfortunately either will spending lots of money. So should everyone just go home and leave this space to Cisco? John Chambers would like you to, I am sure.

I think the problem can be seen from what the Vyatta CEO himself says:

"We understand [Cisco] has an 80% market share and that routing protocols haven't changed much since Methuselah," Herrell said. "But we're taking on the myth that routing requires specialized protocols by offering an open alternative. By doing that, we are allowing the customer to take over what they deploy and manage."

The answer is not to play the same old, same old game but cheaper. Introduce new features and technology into the mix. Linux does not compete with Windows because it is free or cheaper, it works better and offers things Windows doesn't. It is easier to compete if your product is more expensive but has a better feature set (the Cadillac model) then to be the cheap almost as good. Only when we see a router strategy (open source or not), that brings more to the table then the tired old Methuslah protocols, will we see Cisco get some real competition in the router market.