Cisco is usually pretty hands-off with companies, at least more so than other large acquirers. Google and Facebook acquire teams for talent, but have relatively well-planned product lines. Cisco has expansive product lines which it grows through acquisition. Very few Cisco products originate from within Cisco.
What you say might be true in a lot of cases but I know of one case (Ubiquisys) where they were not hands off probably because it was too close to their core business and also because they had a similar internal product.
Now Cisco have given up on the whole small cells idea. And a lot of it is because of their botched management practices and some of it is also due to Ubiquisys' own inefficiencies.
