Cisco’s Latest D-day: May 6

Everybody hold your breath. Cisco Systems is set to announce financial results on May 6. Most observers are cautiously optimistic. If everything goes as planned, Wall Street will breathe a collective sigh of relief. But if CEO John Chambers is in another “lumpy” mood, things could get really ugly real fast.

For The VAR Guy, Cisco is the ultimate bellwether tech stock. The company ranks among the leaders in so many growth markets (unified communications, VoIP, storage, security, etc.) that Cisco provides a pretty good reality check to overall enterprise IT sales.

When CEO Chambers last fall said enterprise sales looked lumpy, a few folks pressed the panic button. Since that time, Cisco has sounded reasonably optimistic amid the uneven economy.

Meanwhile, several networking companies — Alcatel-Lucent, Extreme Networks, Netgear, etc. — have delivered weak results in recent weeks. It begs the question: Is Cisco — or the economy — crushing those companies?

The VAR Guy still doesn’t have a clear answer to that question. But the continued success of Juniper and a potential upside story at Nortel (notes blogger Mark Evans) suggests that some networking companies are holding up well in a down economy.

But the true bellwether, Cisco, will reveal its results on May 6.