What is Cisco white, grey and black market?

What is Cisco white, grey and black market?

a.       Cisco white market means you get the discount/price from the according Cisco Account Manager (AM), and sign contract directly with the pre-agreed or “authorized” reseller, who usually gets the formal Cisco Manufacture Authorization Form from this project. The key is Cisco AM and MAF, which “guarantees” that you get the official support from Cisco.

   a)         Upside:     all beautiful things about “official” support.

   b)         Downside:

                                       i.              The price might be 20~100% higher than the market fair price.

                                     ii.              The “authorized” reseller’s engineering team might not be really qualified.

b.       Cisco grey market means that you get the discount/price NOT from the according Cisco AM, and of course signing contract with an “unauthorized” reseller. The key is wrong AM and genuine Cisco products.

   a)         Upside:              the price might be fair, on top of correct engineering delivery

   b)         Downside:        the quality of product is usually under risk, and the supply is unstable.

c.       Cisco black market means fake or refurbished products being sold as genuine and brand new. Generally Cisco black market is shrinking in last 5 years because the whole market is remodeling, as the wave of SDN is coming, and the margin of faking Cisco is not as lucrative as years back in 02~07. 

Which market is ICI operating in, and why?

ICI is mostly operating in grey market for several reasons, and occasionally works in the white market.
a)         We have good discount resources from multiple Cisco teams, from China, Germany, and India.
 b)         We have good stock products supply, directly from Cisco official distributors, which saves your time.
c)         We do not appreciate the “bigger customer gets better discount” pricing strategy from Cisco.
d)         We hate fake things and we help our friends tell the difference between genuine and fake.
e)         Most of our customers shares similar philosophy of ours, because they are real insiders of network industry.
f)          Grey means independence and quick response, if the quality is secured, getting rid of the complexity of Fortune 500’s (like Cisco) internal processes and paper works.