Cisco Systems (CSCO) on Wednesday held a news conference with Warner Music (WMG) to promote software to create and manage Web sites, one of nearly 30 new businesses the tech-equipment maker is getting into that it says has the potential to someday reach $1 billion in revenue.

Cisco still makes most of its money from sales of networking gear, such as routers and switches. But in the last several years, Cisco has expanded into new areas, some as far flung as consumer video cameras and big-screen TV systems for sports stadiums. The Journal wrote about the new businesses and the management structure necessary to manage them last week.

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Cisco (CSCO) on Monday announced an initiative to sell high-tech gear to utilities, a market the company says could be a $20 billion-a-year market by 2014.

Political junkies may have heard the term “smart grid,” which is one of the areas that the Obama administration has targeted with its stimulus package. The government is committing billions to facilitate building a next-generation electrical grid that’s more energy efficient.

Cisco looks at all this talk about green and sees, well, green. In order to improve their networks, utilities will need to buy routers and switches and other gear that Cisco just happens to sell. Cisco introduced energy-management software in January, and it will no doubt come out with other products that it will package together for utility companies.

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Cisco (CSCO) has decided to be a player in the consumer electronics business.

Cisco is a company that tends to be associated with enterprise networking; at its heart it remains a manufacturer of big honking routers. But over the last few years, the company has made a concerted effort to get into the consumer business, largely through its acquisitions of Linksys, which makes home networking gear, and Scientific Atlanta, manufacturer of cable set-top boxes.

At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas today, Cisco made a set of announcements that extend its consumer ambitions considerably.

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Just like an old-fashioned piece of mail, data traveling over the Internet normally follow a predictable path. As the Internet continues to grow, however, experts have begun to worry that current routing protocols will be unable to cope with increased congestion. And so, as researchers search for new solutions, some are taking inspiration from a famous social experiment that called on people to deliver mail using only a network of friends.

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UBS communications technology analyst Nikos Theodosopoulos this morning upped his rating on Juniper Networks (JNPR) to Buy from Neutral, while maintaining his $21 price target.

“Although JNPR is not immune to macroeconomic weakness, our channel checks suggest solid demand for service provider IP routers,” he writes. He thinks Juniper can hit at least the low end of its 2008 revenue guidance.

Despite the upgrade, he trimmed estimates, and now sees 2008 EPS at $1.03, down from $1.04; for 2009 he goes to $1.16, from $1.38. He now forecasts sales growth of 11 percent this year and 14 percent next year, down from 15 and 17 percent. “Global telco capex and IT spending are at risk in 2009,” he writes.

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