The big question for attendees was whether Cisco can sustain growth and product leadership. The company has had 21 straight quarters where it met or exceeded Thomson Financial analyst consensus expectations, noted Chief Financial Officer Dennis Powell. The company’s share price has benefited, surging by about 25 percent over the past year, compared to about 5 percent growth for the Nasdaq exchange.

Powell forecast 19 percent to 21 percent growth for the quarter ending this October (including revenue from recent acquisitions), about even with Thomson Financial expectations for the first fiscal quarter of 20.4 percent revenue growth.

Conference attendees noted that so far, the company has been able to deliver on its promise to expand into new markets from its traditional corporate switching and router base. One institutional investor who declined to be named noted the company has placed its Carrier Routing System-1 carrier-class product into some 60 companies.

Cisco will also update earlier product lines with features that will allow service providers to have more quality control over applications, according to Mike Volpi, senior vice president of the company’s routing and service provider technology group. The idea is that with more controls, providers can charge more for premium services, and generally upgrade application features. For example, the 12000 Series routers will add per-session control for business VoIP and video in this fiscal year, he said. The 7600 Series routers will also gain per-session controls and subscriber-aggregation features, he said.

While attendees said they would like more specifics about upcoming products, several agreed that certain specifics about the business appear to position the company for further growth.

For example, Powell indicated that the company would offer a dividend to investors, one sign that the company is confident of its growth predictions, noted Mark Sue, an analyst with brokerage RBC Capital Markets. "Of course we’d like to know when, but that is a positive sign," Sue said.

-Marc Ferranti, IDG News Service (New York Bureau)

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