Cisco and Ericsson have acknowledged that their broad-ranging partnership is taking longer than they had hoped to deliver big results, with 17 joint deals closed so far. However, short term impact on sales is only one of the goals in mind – the more important objective is to bring each company a full platform spanning cloud IT and all kinds of networks. The partnership approach is less disruptive to operations than a merger, but it will still take time to integrate the product offerings and the personnel. Had this alliance been formed a couple of years ago, Ericsson would have been very much the senior partner – it has been expanding rapidly into wireline and cloud services markets while Cisco…