Cisco is working to reinvent itself and cash in on the modern shift to cloud computing, after years of being slow to adapt. 

Once the world’s most valuable company, Cisco failed to adapt quickly enough to the shift to the cloud. The company built a lucrative business around traditional networking equipment, and didn’t offer emerging cloud giants equipment that adequately met their needs as they built out their cloud data centers.

According to Bloomberg, the company has been working to reinvent itself, with analysts seeing parallels between Cisco and Microsoft. Much like Cisco, Microsoft missed out on emerging trends, not the least of which was the rise of the smartphone and mobile computing. Under CEO Satya Nadella, however, the Redmond giant has quickly pivoted to the cloud, becoming the second-largest cloud provider in the world. As a result, Microsoft is only the second US company, behind Apple, to cross the $2 trillion valuation mark.

Despite the parallels, Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins said Cisco is in a unique position, with unique challenges.

“The challenge that we have, is that no major technology hardware company has gone through a transformation like this.”

As part of Cisco’s transformation, the company has been focusing on software and services, acquiring a slew of companies to help build its portfolio. Even there, however, the company has faced challenges and missed opportunities. Despite Webex being one of the premier videoconferencing platforms, and still a top choice among corporate users, it has largely taken a backseat to Zoom during the pandemic.

“Webex was the premier brand,” says Erik Suppiger, an analyst for JPM Securities, told Bloomberg. “The perception now is that Zoom has considerable market share advantage.”

Cisco clearly has a long road ahead of it, but the company is optimistic. In fact, it is predicting it will beat analysts expectations in the coming years, predicting its revenue will grow 5-7% each year until at least 2025.

Whether it can live up to those promises remains to be seen.