1. CISCO VS.

JUNIPER
 IT networks constitute the core business for both Cisco and Juniper..
 Routing, switching, security, and wireless constitute the core businesses of both
companies: they both sell network products and associated services like maintenance.
The services revenues represent a similar proportion for both companies at 26% for
Cisco and 30% for Juniper.
 Cisco clearly dominates Juniper in terms of sales with almost ten times more revenues
at about $48B against $5.03B for Juniper in 2017. Cisco employs nearly eight times
more people (72,900) than Juniper (9,381).
 While Juniper stays in its core competencies, Cisco has been expanding into
collaboration and data centers, mainly through acquisitions.
 R&D amounts to 12.6% of Cisco revenues, at slightly more than $6B. Juniper spent
almost $1B in R&D in 2017, representing 19.5% of revenues. Juniper must spend a
higher percentage of revenues in R&D in order to keep up with much bigger
competitors like Cisco. Even with a lower ratio of R&D expenditure, Cisco still
spends $5B more than Juniper, which is equivalent to one year of Juniper's revenues
 On the other hand, both companies allocate the same proportion of sales and
marketing expenses: 19.1% for Cisco at $9.2B, against 18.9% for Juniper at $0.95B.
It is interesting to note that Cisco, a well established and mature high tech company,
spends much more money on marketing compared to R&D. The business model
consists of, depending on the customers, offering large discounts based on expansive
products price lists.
 Cisco greatly profits from its scale thanks to important cross selling opportunities. For
instance, with a strong network and wireless installed base, Cisco can sell
collaboration, data centers, and security solutions benefiting from easier integration
with the Cisco network and monitoring solutions already in place.