It had bought Monterey before the latter's core product was finished, and in 20 months Cisco couldn't get past field trials. Nor does the Pirelli deal look especially promising. Cisco won't say how much long-haul gear it has sold since buying the Italian company late in 1999, but outsiders are dubious. We never understood why they bought Pirelli. 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.