Defining "Cisco Systems"

Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSCO, SEHK: 4333) is a global company headquartered in San Jose, California, USA, that designs and sells networking and communications technology and services under four brands: Cisco, Linksys, WebEx and Scientific Atlanta. Initially, Cisco manufactured only enterprise multi-protocol routers, but today Cisco's products can be found everywhere from the living room to the enterprise to service provider networks. Cisco's vision is "Changing the Way We Live, Work, Play and Learn." Cisco's current tagline is "Welcome to the human network."^[1].

Contents [hide] 1 Corporate history 1.1 Origin of the Cisco name 1.2 Shareholder class action lawsuit against Cisco 1.3 Cisco lawsuit against Huawei 2 Corporate affairs 2.1 Executives 2.2 Corporate acquisitions 3 Products and services 3.1 Partial list of hardware products 3.2 Partial list of software products 3.3 VoIP Services 3.4 Training for Professionals 4 Criticisms 5 See also 6 References 7 External links

[edit] Corporate history

One of the many buildings on the Cisco Systems campus in San Jose

Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married couple that worked in computer operations staff at Stanford University, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software originally written by William Yeager, another staff employee who had begun the work years before Bosack arrived from the University of Pennsylvania, where Bosack had received his bachelor's degree.

While Cisco was not the first company to develop and sell a router (a device that forwards computer traffic between two or more networks) ^[2], it was one of the first to sell commercially successful multi-protocol routers, to allow previously incompatible computers to communicate using different network protocols ^[3]. As the Internet Protocol (IP) has become a standard, the importance of multi-protocol routing as a function has declined. Today, Cisco's largest routers are marketed to route primarily IP packets and MPLS frames.

In 1990, the company went public and was listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange. Bosack and Lerner walked away from the company with $170 million and later divorced.

During the Internet boom in 1999, the company acquired Cerent Corp., a start-up company located in Petaluma, California, for about $7 billion. It was the most expensive acquisition made by Cisco at that time. Since then, only Cisco's acquisition of Scientific-Atlanta has been bigger.

In late March 2000, at the height of the dot-com boom, Cisco was the most valuable company in the world, with a market capitalization of more than $500 billion.^[4][5] In 2007, with a market cap of about $180 billion, it is still one of the most valuable companies.^[6]

Using acquisitions, internal development, and partnering with other companies, Cisco has made inroads into many network equipment markets outside routing, including Ethernet switching, remote access, branch office routers, ATM networking, security, IP telephony, and others. In 2003, Cisco acquired Linksys, a popular manufacturer of computer networking hardware and positioned it as a leading brand for the home and end user networking market (SOHO).

The company was a 2002-03 recipient of the Ron Brown Award.

[edit] Origin of the Cisco name

Cisco Logo used until 2006

The name "Cisco" is an abbreviation of San Francisco. According to John Morgridge, employee 34 and the company's former president, the founders hit on the name and logo while driving to Sacramento to register the company -- they saw the Golden Gate Bridge framed in the sunlight.^[7] The name cisco Systems (with the lowercase "c") continued in use within the engineering community at the company long after the official company name was changed to Cisco Systems, Inc. Users of Cisco products can still see the name ciscoSystems occasionally in bug reports and IOS messages.

The company's logo reflects its San Francisco name heritage: it represents a stylized Golden Gate Bridge. In October 2006, Cisco publicly launched a new logo that is graphically simpler and more stylized than the original.

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisco_Systems