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Making the Cisco Connection : The Story Behind the Real Internet Superpower
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Author: David Bunnell
List Price: $24.95
Our Price: Click to see the latest and low price
ISBN: 0471357111
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons (18 February, 2000)
Edition: Hardcover
Sales Rank: 9,753
Average Customer Rating: 3.69 out of 5
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Customer ReviewsRating: 1 out of 5
Could be alot better
After seeing CISCO profiled on one of Robert Cringley's Nerds 2.0.1 documentary, I was fascinated about how one of the giants of communications was created within a dining room.I bought this book expecting to hear about the excitement and struggles of an organization as it is becoming very big, very fast. This book seemed to vaguely cover this period within Cisco's history. There is very little written about the struggle and difficulties within the management that must have existed at that time. I would not recommend this book.
Rating: 1 out of 5
More pulp non-fiction from the assembly line
This book does a severe disservice to the Cisco story, and to the business book genre in general. The author's lack of insight, much less comprehension of the industry and technology is laughable. Worse yet, his lack of passion for the subject exposes the fact that book was basically a con on his readers.Some representative excerpts:
1) "All and sundry goods could be purchased at McWhorters Express Store in building J. Money was available from the conveniently located ATM." *Talk about telling a compelling story. Alas it has come to this. 2) "The Cisco-Powered Networks campaign was Cisco's first foray into the spehere of the home networking market." *Wow. Time to get a better author, or at least an editor. Hilarious. 3) "Nouns and verbs in Cisco-speak include AccessPath, ClickStart, ..., and FastHub." *What more can one say? Reading this book is laborious, and yet you will learn virtually nothing. Given Cisco's incredible rise from tiny startup to global giant, somebody will eventually write a book that does justice to the story. But not yet, and when they do, I doubt if a "conveniently located ATM" will figure prominently.
Rating: 3 out of 5
A bit thin on details, but still a good story
There has not been a review on this bk for a while, so I thought I will do one. With Dot Com crashes, and Cisco laid off 7000+ workers in 2001, John Chambers' ideal of no large company wide lay offs provide an interesting contrast to much of the PR in this bk.I have just finished reading Hard Drive, by Wallace; and Jack Straight from the Gut, by Jack Welch. Compare to these two books, Making the CISCO Connection was a bit thin on details. I do not know if its editorial lapses or the authors understanding of the material, Bunnell keeps making wild claims like " the future is going to be 100% pure IP.." with no supporting evidence. He also spent quite a few passages comparing ATM and IP as if they are competing technology trying to grap market share. ATM is just another way of hooking up networks like Frame Relay, ISDN... etc. and IP is a protocol that happily runs on any network technolgy that support it. Jeff Bezos made a late appearance towards the end of the book, funny the author never mentioned who he was. There were quite a few of this name dropping with no adequate introductions. You'll get used to it and ignore it. Still, a good story on the rise of Cisco, but don't look for a "behing-the-scene" management guidebook. For interesting decision making process of some of these industry players, go for Hard Drive.
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