Three reasons, according to Roese: 1) the carrier, enterprise and consumer markets are converging, and that plays to Huawei's competencies in each market, he says; 2) there hasn't been a "major new entrant" in a while, even though the market grew substantially; and 3) customers trying to figure out consumerization of IT, the blurring lines between enterprise, carrier and consumer, and how to build extended or virtual enterprise.

"We're entering a market where many of our competitors are a bit complacent," Roese says. "Smaller players are not really strategic threats because they simply are not big enough. Huawei, on the other hand, is clearly big enough."

If Huawei hits that goal of $7 billion in enterprise networking revenue in 2012, it will clearly be the No. 2 player to Cisco, Roese says. The company is looking to be a $10 billion to $15 billion enterprise player in the next five years, he says.

He expects most of that business to come at the expense of Cisco rather than the HPs, Junipers, or smaller players like his old employers Enterasys and Nortel enterprise, which is now owned by Avaya.

"If we took share from everyone but (Cisco), we wouldn't hit our number," Roese says. "The smaller players could potentially struggle in this environment. When there's true competition among the big players, the big players innovate and go after more of those niches filled by smaller players. It will be tough for the mid-sized players to meet the scale of the big players."