How the current war between Cisco and HP will impact and change the B2B channel? I believe that the model of Geoffrey A. Moore and his analysis of Cisco’s position can help considerably to understand how this war started.

In 2006 I wanted to understand better the strategy of Cisco toward the channel. A good friend of mine suggested to buy the book of Geoffrey A. Moore: dealing with Darwin.
The book went well over my expectancy. Not only described how Cisco was organized (and that description is still a very good base to understand the current Cisco’s strategy) but he offered me a complete and powerful method to analyze the innovation process and how brilliant companies (including Cisco, of course), manage it.

Moore describes the innovation life cycle two fundamental step: the Technology Adoption Life Cycle and the Maturity Life Cycle.  Each of them is then divided in several phases.
Graph.  1 describe the position of (some) Cisco’s solutions in 2005 in Moore’s model. 

graph1 - Cisco's solutions in 2005

What makes the Moore’s model so interesting for managers and professionals is that for each phases of the Innovation Life Cycle there is a very limited strategy that the Company can adopt. In the Technology Adoption Life Cycle, one of the possible strategy is the Platform Innovation. This type of innovation interposes a simplifying layer to mask an underlying legacy of complexity and complication, thereby freeing a next generation of offers to focus on new value propositions. Ex. Microsoft and Intel repositioning DOS and 8086 microprocessor family from being component ingredients of IBM’s PC to being PC clone enablers.

Already in that time, as to Moore, Cisco already had a “data center virtualization” vision. Data center itself is simply a network of devices hooked to  a common backplane, optimizing resource utilization across the entire portfolio of equipment. This vision perfectly matches a platform Innovation strategy.
Moore suggests that Cisco should proceed cautiously, leveraging the partner prong of its building-partner-acquire strategy. Each of its key relationship –with EMC, IBM, HP, SUN, Microsoft, Oracle and SAP – can go either way depending on how things are managed.  And Cisco proceed cautiously until March of 2009.  What happened to push Cisco to leave the cautiously road and attack frontally HP (and in part IBM)? I will try to answer this question in my next post.