While Cisco is one of the big kahunas of networking and continues to roll as seen in its Q3 financial results released this week , it's easy to forget that Cisco isn't quite so big when you compare it to other companies of all types.
Cisco ranks No. 71 on the Fortune 500 list of largest U.S. corporations with $34.9 billion in revenue (for fiscal year ended last July 31). Coincidentally, like-sounding SYSCO Corp., the big food distribution company from Houston, is just a notch ahead of Cisco, with $35 billion (See slideshow: Meet the other Ciscos ). Cisco's revenue rose 22% from the year before, while SYSCO's increased a comparatively lackluster 7.4%. And Cisco ranked No. 77 last year, while SYSCO fell from No. 65 to No. 70. So we can see where this is going...
No. 1 on the Fortune list? Wal-Mart, with $378.8 billion in revenue.
When measured other ways, Cisco's rank is much higher than No. 71. It stands at No. 18 for profits and No. 14 for market value (as of March 28).
Meanwhile, VoIP rival Avaya fell off of the Fortune 500 list entirely.
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Avaya went private
Avaya did not "fall off the list"; it was taken private in late 2007 and is no longer publicly traded. Otherwise, it would probably still be on the list.