[Showerthought] Cisco's target audience is no longer network engineers

The impression I've gotten from this sub is Cisco has lost (or are losing) touch with their core customer base.

I think that's probably a fair assessment.

But what if that's not self-destructing.

What if they don't care about us---not because they've lost touch---but because we are no longer their target audience.

What if their target audience has become executives.

And I'm not talking about their usual tactics of scaring CTOs out of buying a competitor's gear, I mean automating all engineering/architecture out of networking, and pocketing our salaries.

Cisco's endgame could be:

1. CTO contacts Cisco with very high-level business requirements, and basic info about their campuses and branches
2. Cisco turns this into a network design and BoM
3. Either Cisco or $org subs out ordering circuits, cabling, and racking equipment
4. Cisco lights up the network with DNA and SD-everything, end-to-end
5. Cisco gives the CTO access to a shiny webgui dashboard with all kinds of feel-good graphs and stats about how smoothly everything's running, and how much money they're saving
6. All monitoring is automatic. Software problems mostly self-heal. More complex issues remotely resolved by engineers in some MSP's NOC, either Cisco's, or a partner's.
7. Hardware problems trigger a task in some maintenance guy's daily queue for replacement during off-hours. Replacement parts are either already on-hand or auto-shipped.
8. A few low-level IT support staff remain at $org mostly for helpdesk work and occasional escalation.
9. Cisco pockets the salaries of all or most mid/senior networking staff.

Just finished one of Tim Szigeti's Cisco Live presentations on advanced QoS. He ends it with something like: "yeah, all that shit I just told you--you won't need to know that anymore. Throw out the 1000-page QoS book. Pretty soon you'll just drag Skype into this box on the DNA webgui, and the fabric will auto-provision QoS to prioritize it, end-to-end, automatically."

Granted, it'll be a while before the DNA/SD* stuff really proves itself. And maybe that's only feasible for campus/access--the DC/ISP space might look different--but then again, maybe not.