Rick Gallahers MPLS Training Guide: Building Multi Protocol Label Switching Networks

A business lesson that I learned the hard way is that there are two ways two go broke: 1) making something that you cannot sell; and 2) selling something you cannot make. Let’s not let MPLS fall into either one of these categories, shown in Figure 9.1.

Figure 9.1: How to Go Broke

A great many vendors are making MPLS switches and routers - the issue now has become one of how to sell them.

All of us engineers may think that “if you build it, they will come”; however, the dot-com dilemma has proved that a better mousetrap will not sell itself.

The questions in marketing remain (see Figure 9.2): To whom are we selling? What do they want? What do they need? And how do we sell our product?

Figure 9.2: Questions in Marketing