[adventured]

Cisco isn't the company you seem to think it is. They've spent the last ~15 years gradually diversifying away from that single point of business failure in their old line hardware business. They recognized the threat of cheaper competitive hardware products a long time ago, China gave them a serious wake up call (the issues with Huawei go all the way back 18 or so years now).

The majority of their sales come from software and services now. The business you are likely thinking of when you picture Cisco, has been shrinking. Growth in their other segments (whether organic or acquired) is keeping them flat more or less across the past five years (both sales and operating profit have been close to flat going back to fiscal 2017).

[dboreham]

You know a company has become truly successful when nobody knows exactly what they do. E.g. SAP

[dmix]

There’s so many niches in enterprise software just looking for someone to say yes to all of their questions. It’s not surprising really.

[flavius29663]

IBM too

[hadlock]

I was surprised when Cisco bought Tidal enterprise orchestration management tool (which I had worked with for years). Great way to get your foot in the door at a lot of Very Large financial companies offering professional software services. They've been buying up tons of B and C tier enterprise software for years, and a lot of blue chip clients in the process.