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Cisco Systems

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Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: [CSCO], ) is an American manufacturer of telecommunications equipment based in California. The company originally manufactured only enterprise routing equipment, but it now sells a variety of devices for both enterprises and telecommunications carriers. These include, but are not limited to:

Cisco's tag line is "The Worldwide Leader in Networking for the Internet" [link].

Contents

Corporate history

A Cisco ASM/2-32EM router deployed at CERN in 1987.
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A Cisco ASM/2-32EM router deployed at CERN in 1987.

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 from one network to another), it did create the first commercially successful multi-protocol router to allow previously incompatible computers to communicate using different network protocols. 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 [link], and later divorced.

Using acquisitions, internal development and partnering with other companies Cisco has made inroads into many network equipment markets outside of 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 the end user networking market (SOHO).

Cisco has set up "Cisco Networking Academies" in 150 countries aimed at teaching students to design and maintain computer networks.

Cisco provides certifications to professionals in the networking field. These include:

The company has its corporate headquarters in San Jose, California and also many outposts in other countries.

Executives

John Chambers is the current President and CEO.

Other senior executives include:

John Morgridge - Chairman of the Board

Brad Boston - Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer

Charles H. Giancarlo - Senior Vice President and Chief Development Officer

Dennis D. Powell - Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer

Susan Bostrom - Senior Vice President, Chief Marketing Officer

Wim Elfrink - Senior Vice President, Customer Advocacy

Joe Pinto - Senior Vice President, Technical Support Services

Rick Justice - Senior Vice President, Worldwide Field Operations

Origin of the Cisco name

The name "Cisco" is an abbreviation of San Francisco. According to John Morgridge, employee 34 and the company's first 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 [link]. 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.

Corporate acquisitions

For a list and discussion of Cisco's acquisitions, see Cisco Systems acquisitions.

A partial list of products

[link]

Criticism

See also

External links

Hardware companies: AMD - Cisco - Dell - Intel - Motorola - Nokia - Samsung - Sony - TI - Toshiba
Software companies: Amazon - eBay - Google - Novell - Oracle - SAP - Yahoo!
Hardware/software companies: Apple - EMC - HP - IBM - Microsoft - Sun

 

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.

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