Being overruled by leadership because of "familiarity" -- A rant

Just wanted to let this off my chest. This is not so much meant as a flame war between Cisco and Aruba. I think they're both are great.

I work for a small-medium sized college. We're in the process of upgrading our switches (under 200) and we're down to 2, Aruba and Cisco since we have both already in some shape or form. I made the presentation w/ quotes and pros and cons. Got quotes for 92-9300s for C and 2930+6300s for A. As some of you may guess, C's quote was significantly more!

I was surprised to find out that our leadership is leaning more towards C, mainly because we're also doing E911/CER and since they believe it'll be an easier transition/familiarity. Mind you there's basically 1 other person who works with me on networks. He happens to do the phones.

For one, our phone vlan scheme would have to be gutted regardless since it was created over a decade ago. Vlans are stretched between buildings and floors. Plus, there's no location info in any of them. I'm not a voip guy but from what i understand, going with C will allow port tracking capabilities for phones which i guess will help w/ overhead when someone moves locations. With 'A' tracking would have to be done via (new) subnets.

Going back to cost, we already pay up the nose w/ smartnet, licenses, etc. We also have several projects (such as e911) that would be funded if we choose A. Some of you in the public sector may have gotten some CARES act money. This is basically how we're affording all this. Being a small college we've gone thru our share of downsizing. We've also done our share of really dumb moves over the years.

I'm just frustrated. It's like you're trying to help but people are putting 'ease' over everything. Speaking of ease, I'm the one who will be using it! I know it's not my money to save but i've been there long enough to know that we'll have our lean years and that means cuts to budgets or worse, jobs.

​

/rant