Best Small Cos. That's hard to glean from Cisco's press releases.
Cisco needs to gain in telecom to keep growing.
But in telecom, big players worry about relying on Cisco when it sells only metro gear. Giving us the individual elements isn't enough. Out of necessity, Cisco is now seeking to grow elsewhere in wireless, storage and voice calls over the internet. Underlying it all is Cisco's certainty in the spread of the net, whose data traffic still doubles every month. But with prices uncertain, telecom clients reeling and upstarts like Juniper Networks gaining, Cisco's old certainties seem as out of place as its propensity for swagger.