Make no mistake--Cisco gets the gold and you don't necessarily get best performance because you've adopted their standard. Cisco is touted as "the gold standard" and I argue that you may be relinquishing your company gold to buy into protection.Many folks counter that, "No one ever gets fired for buying Cisco." Some recent posts question the market, saturation points and lack of developing technology as to whether or not Cisco will falter in being top dog. I won't argue that they will lose momentum and I do argue that they are on top for some right reasons. Still you can't ignore that when another company provides a solution just as good or even better and then backs it up; why does large enterprise continue to break bread with Cisco? Folks and even some shareholders must wonder at least from a business perspective how large enterprise continues to afford to pay top dollar and whether or not it is really necessary.
VARs serving SMBs and distributed enterprise, I believe, purchase and recommend ADTRAN solutions not because of the ABC (Anything But Cisco) principle, but because they must meet customer demands: simplicity, value, lowered costs to own and operate, and ease of installation without sacrificing on quality, performance and/or support. This sums up at least our value added take on pitching ADTRAN to our clients. We've never been fired for recommending and installing ADTRAN solutions. In fact, we stood more chances on numerous occasions to lose credibility had we gone the course of cheap retail as do many SMBs by listening to their experts focusing in on cost and ignoring performance. Our fate would be the same of those that previously failed to deliver on the promises outlined above.
Frank Ohlhorst writes in, The Truth About Router Performance (ADTRAN NetVanta Multiservice Routers versus Cisco Integrated Service Routers (Gen.2) that: "baseline is not an accurate representation of true performance" and that, "purchasers need to focus on the real-world performance capabilities of the router." It's not the marketing that sells an SMB, it's the VAR standing in the door that gains and maintains the trust of the customer. Every person in this role knows that "real-world" equates to solutions. Below are the test results of Frank's evaluation Real World Bandwidth Utilization (ADTRAN vs Cisco). Many in large enterprise also know the power of Cisco marketing. 
The other results found in the report also show significant advantages that ADTRAN holds over Cisco in other tests that take on Internet security and secure corporate connectivity with VPNs and encryption loads on the routers. The other point that Frank Ohlhorst makes in his report is ADTRAN OS is designed from the ground up "unlike a vendor who grows through acquisition often has challenges merging conglomerate code bases from multiple products/technologies."
