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Cisco Systems
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Cisco Systems, Inc. () 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.
Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married couple who worked as computer operations staff at Stanford University, later joined by Richard Troiano, founded cisco Systems in 1984.
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Encyclopedia
Cisco Systems, Inc. () 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.
Corporate history
Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married couple who worked as computer operations staff at Stanford University, later joined by Richard Troiano, 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.
While Cisco was not the first company to develop and sell a router, it was one of the first to sell commercially successful routers supporting multiple network protocols. As the Internet Protocol (IP) became widely adopted, the importance of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's largest routers are primarily used to deliver a multitude of technologies through corporate, enterprise, and service provider networks. Some of the more notable technologies and protocols are IP, MPLS, Frame Relay and .
In 1990, the company 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, such as Stratacom, were the biggest deals when they 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 successful, Cisco has more frequently succeeded in integrating and growing the revenue of its acquisitions than its competitors. Several acquired companies have grown into $1Bn+ business units for Cisco in LAN switching, Enterprise VOIP, and home networking.
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. In January 2009, with a market cap of about US$93 billion, it is still one of the most valuable companies. CISCO 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 (active). The Corporate Headquarters is on East Tasman Drive in San Jose, California, between Zanker Road and Cisco Way.
The company was a 2002-03 recipient of the Ron Brown Award.
Cisco's vision is "Changing the Way We Work, Live, Play and Learn."
Cisco's current tagline is "Welcome to the human network."
Products and services
Partial list of hardware products
 - Broadband Cable products: uBR7100 series, uBR7200 series, uBR10012 CMTSes. A line of Cable modems, the uBR900 series and CVA122 series, were also made in the late 1990s and early 2000s, but have since been discontinued.
- Content Networking
- DSL & Long Reach Ethernet
- Interoperability Systems
- Cisco LocalDirector load-balancing appliance
- Optical Networking series: 15xxx Series: 15302, 15305, 15310, 15327, 15454, 15600, 1580x, 15900(wavelength router, but end for sale)
- Micro Webservers: 100, 200
- Routers: AGS, AGS+, MGS, IGS, CGS, SB107, 700, 800, 837, 1000 Series, 1600 Series, 1700, 1800, 2500 Series, 2600 Series, 2800, 3600, 3700, 3800, 4000 Series, 4500, 7000 Series, 7100/7200/7300/7400 Mid Range Customer Edge/Service Provider Edge family, 7500, 7600, 10000, 12000, and CRS-1
- Security & VPN products: Anomaly Detection and Mitigation Appliances, Cisco AVS 3110 Application Velocity System, Cisco ASA 5500 Series Adaptive Security Appliances, Cisco PIX 500 Series Security Appliances, Cisco VPN 3000 Series Concentrators, Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series/7600 Series WebVPN Services Module, IPSec VPN Services Module (VPNSM) for Cisco Catalyst 6500 Switches and Cisco 7600 Series Routers
- Server Networking & Virtualization
- SPA Phone Adapters
- Storage networking
- Switches
- Catalyst series: 500 and 520 Express, 1900 Series, 2900, 2950, 2960, 3560 and 3560E, 3750 and 3750E, 4500, 6500 and 5000 switch (from the Nuova Systems Inc. acquisition] etc..
- Metro Ethernet ME 3400 Series Access Switches
- MGX 8800 Series Multiservice Switches: MGX 8830, MGX 8850
- MDS 9000 Series Multilayer SAN Switches
- Nexus 1000V distributed virtual software switch
- Universal Gateways & Access Servers
- Video
- Cisco Telepresence
- Voice & IP Communications: 7900 Series IP Phones: 7936, 7906G, 7912G, 7911G, 7920, 7921G, 7911G, 7921G, 7931G, 7940G, 7941G, 7941G-GE, 7960G, 7961G, 7961G-GE, 7970G, 7971G-GE, 7975G and 7985G
- Wireless: Wireless Integrated Switches and Routers,Wireless IP Telephony, Wireless LAN Access, Aironet Wireless Bridges and Workgroup Bridges, Cisco Wireless LAN Client Adapters (PCI and PCMCIA), Wireless LAN Controllers, Wireless Network Management, Wireless LAN Management, Wireless Security Servers, Wireless IP Phone 7920
Partial list of software products
- Internet Operating System (IOS), IOS-XR
- PIX 2 ASA Migration Tool (PAMT)
- CMatch
- Compliance Assessment Tool
- Cisco Active Network Abstraction (ANA)
- Cisco AnyConnect VPN Client
- Cisco Network Assistant (CNA)
- Cisco Configuration Assistant (CCA)
- Cisco Configuration Professional (CCP)
- Cisco CallManager / Unified Communications Manager (CUCM)
- Cisco Emergency Responder (CER)
- Cisco IP Transfer Point (ITP)
- Cisco Multimedia Conference Manager (MCM)
- Cisco Fabric Manager
- CiscoView
- CiscoWorks Network Management software
- IP SLAs
- Cisco Intelligent Contact Management
- Cisco Secure Access Control Server (ACS)
- Cisco Access Registrar (AR)
- Cisco Security MARS (Monitoring, Analysis and Response System)
- Cisco Clean Access Agent, Cisco Clean Access Manager, Cisco NAC Appliance
- Content Loadbalancers (acquired from Arrowpoint)
- Content Engine
- Wireless LAN Solution Engine
- Cisco VPN Client
- Packet Tracer, a didactic network simulator
- Cisco IP/TV
- Cisco IP/VC
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- Cisco MeetingPlace
- Cisco Network Magic
- Cisco Secure Services Client (formerly AEGIS Client, an 802.1X supplicant)
- Cisco Unity
- Cisco Unified Communications Manager
- Cisco Unified Personal Communicator
- Cisco Unified Presence Server
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- Cisco IP Communicator
- Cisco Unified Video Advantage
- Cisco Secure Desktop
- Cisco Unified Phone Proxy
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- Cisco Voice Portal
- Cisco Security Manager
- WebEx Collaboration Tools
- Cisco Transport Manager
- Cisco Router and Security Device Manager
- Cisco Enhanced Device Interface
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- Wide Area Application Services (WAAS)
- BTS 10200 [PacketCable specifications based SoftSwitch with Class 4/5 and IMS functionalities]
- PGW 2200
- HSI
Cisco Systems VPN Client
The Cisco Systems VPN Client is an executable program that allows Linux, Mac 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 VPN Client
Cisco has recently released a new VPN client called Cisco AnyConnect VPN. The Cisco AnyConnect VPN uses TLS and DTLS as the tunneling protocol instead of the legacy IPSec mechanism. The AnyConnect client is supported on all 32 and 64 bit versions Windows, including Win7; Linux; Mac OS X Intel and PPC; and Windows Mobile Touch Screen Devices 5, 6, 6.1. This new client is growing in popularity because it supports 64 bit operating systems.
VoIP services
Cisco 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.
Criticisms and controversy
China
Cisco has been criticized for its involvement in censorship in the People's Republic of China. 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. Leaked documents suggests that Cisco sees information control in China as a good commercial opportunity.
Shareholder class action lawsuit against Cisco
On 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." 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.
Cisco lawsuit against Huawei
On 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. 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.
Cisco's Brazil Tax Fraud Investigation
On 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 by Cisco Systems since 2002 that exempted the company from paying over R$1.5 billion (US$824 million) in taxes.
Free Software Foundation suit
On December 11, 2008, the Free Software Foundation filed suit against Cisco (see FSF vs. Cisco) regarding Cisco's failure to comply with the GPL and LGPL license models and make the applicable source code publicly available.
See also
External links
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