Tanzania, March 21 -- San Jose, California, 2014.

Two tech wizards, one from Tanzania, walk onto the Cisco campus, a networking giant. Their mission? To upgrade their organisation's internet infrastructure, already one of the most advanced in Africa.

They had a sophisticated set of feature requirements that would challenge - as they were about to find - even the very best in the market.

Cisco, then at its peak, boasted gold-standard technology. Their solutions were reliable, but they had one catch - they were not cheap.

But these guys weren't fazed. They knew that Cisco's competitor, Juniper Networks, had already achieved what they sought.

Strangely, Cisco experts didn't know that yet. That point was only settled when the team - incl...