One of our large UK customers recently received notification from Cisco that certain models of switches were approaching end of life and would soon be due for replacement.

Needless to say such a major refresh of this infrastructure had not been budgeted within the current year, indeed with stinging IT cuts generally it was very unwelcome.

The vendor had provided the company with a tally of switches employed and a proposal for replacement.  But, for management, that was not enough.

Using iQSonar a complete and independent inventory of Catalyst switches was created in just 2 days.  It provided detailed information, including serial number, software version, location and, of course, details as to whether the switch was actually in use.

Using the information gathered Management completed a compatibility matrix identifying end of life hardware, version upgrades required, etc.

The vendor’s revised proposal, this time based on the company’s own verifiable information, resulted in 6 figure savings.