Twelve years ago, Charlie Giancarlo took the company in the wrong direction. A number of individuals even then understood that far from being a mere enabler of hardware sales, its intellectual property in the Cisco IOS Operating systems was a basis for unprecedented customer monetiation. They foresaw the benefits of opening up the IOS family of products to 3rd party developers, and ultimately to customers. They openly discussed a plan to created SDKs, Web sites, the entire panoply of tools and services needed to created a development community. Time has proven them wise. If Cisco is now discharging 7% of its work force every year, it is because it lacked, was hostile to, inimical, to this vision. And where there is no vision, companies perish. Cisco has an opportunity again to become a leader in Open Network Computing. Given its large installed base, one can only hope Ciscso shall succeed, for the benefit of their customers who have put up with them, and its own future.