Two weeks ago, I had the unique opportunity of speaking with two of networking's top CEOs: Cisco's John Chambers and Juniper's Scott Kriens. They're both eyeing the same big opportunity - the next generation of your network - but face different challenges in capturing that prize.

Chambers and Kriens have a consistent view of the future: a converged, multiservices IP network that gets smarter and smarter - meaning it gets better at dealing with security threats, handling multimedia traffic, managing problems and optimizing application performance. The lines between your enterprise and service provider networks will blur, helping you better support remote workers and distributed applications.

But getting to that future won't be easy for either Cisco or Juniper. For Chambers the challenge is all about focus. For Kriens, it's about speed.

While both Cisco and Juniper target enterprises and service providers, Cisco also has big plays in the consumer and small-midsize business markets. Network lines may blur in the future, but today these four markets are distinct - different buyers, pricing and support models.

Chambers will have his arms full trying to win in all of them and to find synergies among them. Add to the mix the big acquisition of Scientific Atlanta - an out-of-character deal for Cisco - and the juggling act gets even trickier. Will Cisco's attention on enterprise customers suffer? Will it reinvest the premiums it earns from enterprise buyers or divert that money to fuel its other aspirations?

All that is not lost on Kriens, who sounded the theme of focus, focus, focus, and vowed that Juniper will not be distracted by consumer opportunities.

But focus alone won't help Juniper. Cisco has amassed an incredible arsenal of enterprise technologies and has announced major initiatives to improve security, management, data center networking and application optimization. Juniper has acquired some great technologies and it has garnered a lot of press for its increased enterprise presence. But it's not enough to espouse a similar high-level vision. Juniper needs to be clearer about its long-term enterprise strategy, how it intends to fill the gaps in its product line and how it will deliver a network that is different and better than what Cisco is proposing.