Technology
Cisco Wants to Climb Back the Way Microsoft Did
The networking giant says it has turned a corner in its attempt to adapt to the cloud era.
Cisco Systems headquarters in San Jose.
Photographer: David Paul Morris/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
For a fleeting moment in the year 2000, Cisco Systems Inc. was the world’s most valuable company. Then the networking company failed to capitalize on fundamental shifts in computing that followed the dot-com crash, and it fell out of the top tier of U.S. technology companies. Cisco’s market value is now about half its peak, and less than 10% the level of today’s most valuable company, Apple Inc.
Cisco is hardly a failure. It produces billions of dollars in annual profits and is generally regarded as stable and well-run. But investors feared that its steady operations could lead to a slow-motion descent into obsolescence in an industry that can be brutal to anyone who falls a half-step behind.