CISCO HISTORY

CISCO HISTORY

1984-1990: early years Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married couple who worked as computer operations staff members at Stanford University, later joined by Nicholas Pham, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner moved on to direct computer services at Schlumberger, moving full time to Cisco in 1987. The name "Cisco" was derived from the city name, San Francisco, which is why the company's engineers insisted on using the lower case "cisco" in the early days. For Cisco's first product, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software originally written some years before by William Yeager, another Stanford employee who later joined Sun Microsystems. The company's first CEO was Bill Graves, who held the position from 1987 to 1988.[6] In 1988, John Morgridge was appointed CEO. On February 16, 1990, the company went public (with a market capitalization of $224 million) and was listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange. On August 28, 1990, Lerner was fired; upon hearing the news, her husband Bosack resigned in protest. The couple walked away from Cisco with $170 million, 70% of which was committed to their own charity.[7] While Cisco was not the first company to develop and sell a router,[8] it was one of the first to sell commercially successful routers supporting multiple network protocols.[9] Classical, CPU-based architecture of early Cisco devices coupled with flexibility of operating system IOS allowed for keeping up with evolving technology needs by means of frequent software upgrades. Some models (such as Cisco 2500) managed to stay in production for 5–8 years virtually unchanged. Although Cisco products had their roots in the enterprise environment, the company was quick to capitalize in emerging service provider market as well, entering market with successful product lines such as Cisco 7500 and GSR. Between 1992 and 1994, Cisco also acquired several companies in Ethernet switching, most notably Kalpana, Grand Junction and Crescendo Communications which together formed the Catalyst product line. At the time, the company envisioned layer 3 routing layer 2 (Ethernet, Token Ring) switching as complementary functions of different intelligence and architecture - the former was slow and complex, the latter was fast but simple. In 1995, John Morgridge was succeeded by John Chambers [edit] 1996-2005: Internet and silicon intelligence The phenomenal growth of Internet in mid-to late 1990s quickly changed telecom landscape. As the Internet Protocol (IP) became widely adopted, the importance of multi-protocol routing declined. Nevertheless, Cisco managed to capitalize on the Internet wave, with a wide range of products that became vital to Internet service providers and by 1998 gave Cisco de-facto monopoly in this critical market segment. In late March 2000, at the height of the dot-com boom, Cisco became the most valuable company in the world, with a market capitalization of more than US$500 billion.[10][11] In November 2011, with a market cap of about US$94 billion,[12] it is still one of the most valuable companies.[13] Meanwhile, the growth of Internet bandwidth requirements kept challenging traditional, software-based packet processing architectures. The perceived complexity of programming routing functions in silicon led to formation of several startups determined to find new ways to process IP and MPLS packets entirely in hardware and blur boundaries between routing and switching. One of them, Juniper Networks, shipped their first product in 1999 and by 2000 chipped away about 30% from Cisco SP Market share. Cisco answered the challenge with homegrown ASICs and fast processing cards for GSR routers and Catalyst 6500 switches. In 2004, Cisco also started migration to new high-end hardware CRS-1 and software architecture IOS-XR. [edit] 2006-current: The Human Network As part of the massive rebranding campaign of 2006, Cisco Systems adopted the shortened name "Cisco" and created "The Human Network" advertising campaign. These efforts were meant to make Cisco a "household" brand - a strategy designed to support the low-end Linksys products and future consumer products (such as Flip Video camera acquired by Cisco in 2009). As part of the company's overseas strategy, Cisco built substantial presence in India. It has established its Globalization Centre East in Bangalore for $1 billion planning that 20% of Cisco's leaders will be based there.[14] However, Cisco continued to be challenged by both domestic Alcatel-Lucent, Juniper Networks and overseas competitors Huawei. Due to lower than expected profit in 2011, Cisco was forced to reduce annual expenses by $1 billion. The company cut around 3,000 employees with an early-retirement program who accepted buyout and planned to eliminate as many as 10,000 jobs (around 14 percent of the 73,400 total employees before curtailment).[15][16] During the 2011 analyst call, Cisco's CEO John Chambers called out several competitors by name,[17] including Juniper and HP. [edit] Media and awards Cisco products, most notably IP phones and Telepresence, are frequently sighted in movies and TV series.[18] The company itself and its history was featured in the documentary film Something Ventured which premiered in 2011. Cisco was a 2002–03 recipient of the Ron Brown Award,[19][20] a U.S. presidential honor to recognize companies "for the exemplary quality of their relationships with employees and communities". Cisco commonly stays on top of Fortune "100 Best Companies to work for", with position No. 20 in 2011[21] Cisco Systems Logo Type Public Traded as NASDAQ: CSCO, SEHK: 4333 Dow Jones Component S&P 500 Component Industry Computer networking Founded San Francisco, California, U.S. (1984) Founder(s) Len Bosack, Sandy Lerner, Richard Troiano, Nicholas Pham Headquarters San Jose, California, U.S.[1] Area served Worldwide Key people John Chambers (Chairman & CEO) Products Networking Device Network Management Cisco IOS and NX-OS Software Interface and Module Optical networking[disambiguation needed ] Storage area networks Wireless, Telepresence, VOIP, Security Datacenter List of Cisco Products Revenue increase US$ 43.21 billion (2011)[2] Operating income decrease US$ 7.67 billion (2011)[2] Net income decrease US$ 6.49 billion (2011)[2] Total assets increase US$ 87.09 billion (2011)[2] Total equity increase US$ 47.25 billion (2011)[2] Employees 63,465 (2011)[3] Subsidiaries List of acquisitions Website Cisco.com