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"Cisco" redirects here. For other uses, see Cisco (disambiguation).
Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSCO, SEHK: 4333) is a multinational corporation with more than 66,000 employees and annual revenue of US$39 billion as of 2008. Headquartered in San Jose, California, it designs and sells networking and communications technology and services under five brands, namely Cisco, Linksys, WebEx, IronPort, and Scientific Atlanta.
[edit] Corporate history
Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married couple that worked in computer operations staff at Stanford University, later joined by Richard Troiano, founded cisco Systems in 1984. The name "Cisco" was derived from the city name, San Francisco, which is why the company insisted using the lower case 'cisco' in the early days. 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,[2] it was one of the first to sell commercially successful routers supporting multiple 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. Lerner was fired and because of that, Bosack quit but not before receiving $200 million. Most of those profits were given to charities and the two later divorced. Cisco acquired a variety of companies to bring in talent and innovation into the company. Several acquisitions, e.g. Stratacom, were the biggest deals at the time when it happened. During the Internet boom in 1999, the company acquired Cerent Corp., a start-up company located in Petaluma, California, for about US$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. Although not every acquisition is equally successful, Cisco has been on the successful side integrating its acquisitions compared to its competitors. Several acquired companies has grown into the backbone business units for Cisco in the LAN switching, VOIP, and home networking area. 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 US$500 billion.[4][5] In 2007, with a market cap of about US$180 billion, it is still one of the most valuable companies.[6]. CSCO was voted stock of the decade on NASDAQ. The company's 7500 Series router was voted 3rd in the product of the decade 1990-2000 behind the Mosaic web browser and the Novell LAN manager. 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's first two CEOs are John Morgridge and John Chambers [1] (active). The company was a 2002-03 recipient of the Ron Brown Award. [edit] Corporate affairsThe company has its corporate headquarters in San Jose, California, with many buildings in the area near North First Street and Tasman. Cisco also has outposts in many other countries such as Algeria, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Belize, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, Honduras, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Kuwait, Kosovo, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Malaysia, Mexico, Monaco, Montenegro, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Norway, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Puerto Rico and The Caribbean, Romania, Russia, Senegal, Serbia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, Uruguay, Venezuela, Vietnam.[7] Cisco's vision is "Changing the Way We Work, Live, Play and Learn." Cisco's current tagline is "Welcome to the human network."[8] [edit] Products and services[edit] Partial list of hardware products
[edit] Partial list of software products
[edit] Cisco Systems VPN ClientThe Cisco Systems VPN Client is an executable program that allows Linux, OS X, Solaris and Windows based computers to connect to a Virtual Private Network (VPN). The client makes remote resources of another network available in a secure way as if the user was connected directly to that "private" network. The software is not free but is often installed on university and business computers in accordance with a site-license. Cisco has recently released a client called Cisco AnyConnect VPN. This new client supports 64 bit operating systems. [edit] VoIP servicesCisco became a major provider of Voice over IP to enterprises, and is now moving into the home user market through its acquisitions of Scientific Atlanta and Linksys. Scientific Atlanta provides VoIP equipment to cable service providers such as Time Warner, Cablevision, Rogers Communications, UPC, and others; Linksys has partnered with companies such as Skype and Yahoo to integrate consumer VoIP services with wireless and cordless phones. [edit] Criticisms and controversy[edit] ChinaCisco has been criticized for its involvement in censorship in the People's Republic of China.[9] According to author Ethan Gutmann, Cisco and other telecommunications equipment providers supplied the Chinese government with surveillance and Internet infrastructure equipment that is used to block Internet websites and track Chinese on-line activities. Cisco says that it does not customize or develop specialized or unique filtering capabilities to enable governments or regimes to block access to information and that it sells the same equipment in China as it sells worldwide.[10] Leaked documents suggests that Cisco sees information control in China as a good commercial opportunity.[11] [edit] Shareholder class action lawsuit against CiscoOn August 18, 2006 Cisco reached a settlement in a long-standing class action lawsuit that originated in 2001. "The original suit, filed April 20, 2001, claimed that the company made misleading statements, or omitted statements of material fact, that were relied on by purchasers of Cisco stock. It also alleged that the individual defendants sold Cisco stock while in possession of material, non-public information. Cisco denied all allegations in the suit."[12] While Cisco denies all wrongdoing in the suit, it agreed to settle with the plaintiffs. Cisco's liability insurers, its directors, and officers paid the plaintiffs US$91.75 million to settle the suit.[13] [edit] Cisco lawsuit against HuaweiOn January 23, 2003, Cisco sued Huawei Technologies, Co., Ltd and its subsidiaries, Huawei America, Inc. and FutureWei Technologies, Inc. over Huawei's unlawful copying of Cisco's intellectual property.[14] The suit alleged that Huawei "unlawfully copied and misappropriated Cisco's IOS software... and infringed numerous Cisco patents." Cisco suspended the patent infringement lawsuit on October 1, 2003, after Huawei agreed to modify some of their products. [edit] BrazilOn October 16, 2007, the Brazilian Federal Police and Brazilian Receita Federal (equivalent to the American IRS) under the "Persona Operation" uncovered an alleged tax fraud scheme employed since 2002 that exempted the company from paying over R$1.5 billion (US$824 million) in taxes.[15] [edit] See also
[edit] References
[edit] External links
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