>I think the answer to this is that companies prefer to buy "boxes" over running their own infrastructure. Sure, under the hood it's the exact same thing, but Cisco can market a nice grey box with a logo to your manager and you can't market a Linux kernel tool.
This is spot on. Companies prefer it because it comes with a support contract and defined SLAs.*
The vast majority of companies that don't actively develop infra or software, aren't going to invest in support for OSS . (Think retail companies). They want to buy a solution and that means all of the solution, including support and who they can blame when it catastrophically fails.*
*These may be meaningless most of the time if its a suitably complex problem.
** Also they may just not equipped to actually hire and build the infra in a meaningful way.*
This is spot on. Companies prefer it because it comes with a support contract and defined SLAs.*
The vast majority of companies that don't actively develop infra or software, aren't going to invest in support for OSS . (Think retail companies). They want to buy a solution and that means all of the solution, including support and who they can blame when it catastrophically fails.*
*These may be meaningless most of the time if its a suitably complex problem.
** Also they may just not equipped to actually hire and build the infra in a meaningful way.*