cisco systems cisco redirects here for other uses see cisco disambiguation not to be confused with sysco coordinates cisco systems inctypepublictradedas nasdaqcsco nasdaq100 component djia component sp 100 component sp 500 component industry networking hardware founded december10 1984 33 years ago in san francisco california united states founders leonard bosacks andy lerner headquarters san jose california united states area served world wide key people chuck robbins ceo and chairman productslist of cisco products revenue us 4933 billion 2018 subsidiarieslist of acquisitions by cisco systemswebsiteciscocom cisco systems inc is an american multinational technology conglomerate headquartered in san jose california in the center of silicon valley that develops manufactures and sells networking hardware telecommunications equipment and other hightechnology services and products through its numerous acquired subsidiaries such as opendns webex jabber and jasper cisco specializes into specific tech markets such as internet of things iot domain security and energy management cisco is the largest networking company in the world the stock was added to the dow jones industrial average on june 8 2009 and is also included in the sp 500 index the russell 1000 index nasdaq100 index and the russell 1000 growth stock index cisco systems was founded in december 1984 by leonard bosack and sandy lerner two stanford university computer scientists who pioneered the concept of a local area network lan being used to connect geographically disparate computers over a multiprotocol router system by the time the company went public in 1990 when it was listed on the nasdaq cisco had a market capitalization of 224 million cisco was the most valuable company in the world by 2000 with a more than 500 billion market capitalization as of 2018 cisco is ranked no 62 in the fortune 500 list of the largest united states corporations by total revenue history 19841995 origins and initial growth cisco systems was founded in december 1984 by sandy lerner who managed the graduate school of businesss computer and her husband leonard bosack who was in charge of the stanford university computer science departments computers despite founding cisco in 1984 bosack along with kirk lougheed continued to work at stanford on ciscos first product it consisted of exact replicas of stanfords blue box router and a stolen copy of the universitys multipleprotocol router software the software was originally written some years earlier at stanford medical school by research engineer william yeager bosack and lougheed adapted it into what became the foundation for cisco ios on july 11 1986 bosack and lougheed were forced to resign from stanford and the university contemplated filing criminal complaints against cisco and its founders for the theft of its software hardware designs and other intellectual properties in 1987 stanford licensed the router software and two computer boards to cisco in addition to bosack lerner and lougheed greg satz a programmer and richard troiano who handled sales completed the early cisco team the companys first ceo was bill graves who held the position from 1987 to 1988 in 1988 john morgridge was appointed ceo the name cisco was derived from the city name san francisco which is why the companys engineers insisted on using the lower case cisco in its early years the logo is intended to depict the two towers of the golden gate bridge on february 16 1990 cisco systems went public with a market capitalization of 224million 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 170million 70 of which was committed to their own charity although cisco was not the first company to develop and sell dedicated network nodes classical cpubased 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 popular models of that time such as cisco 2500 managed to stay in production for almost a decade virtually unchangeda rarity in hightech industry although cisco was strongly rooted in the enterprise environment the company was quick to capture the emerging service provider environment entering the sp market with new highcapacity product lines such as cisco 7000 and cisco 8500 between 1992 and 1994 cisco acquired several companies in ethernet switching such as kalpana grand junction and most notably mario mazzolas crescendo communications which together formed the catalyst business unit at the time the company envisioned layer 3 routing and layer 2 ethernet token ring switching as complementary functions of different intelligence and architecturethe former was slow and complex the latter was fast but simple this philosophy dominated the companys product lines throughout the 1990s in 1995 john morgridge was succeeded by john chambers 19962005 internet and silicon intelligence john t chambers led cisco as its ceo between 1995 and 2015 pictured at 2010 world economic forum in davos switzerland the phenomenal growth of the internet in midtolate 1990s quickly changed the telecom landscape as the internet protocol ip became widely adopted the importance of multiprotocol routing declined nevertheless cisco managed to catch the internet wave with products ranging from modem access shelves as5200 to core gsr routers that quickly became vital to internet service providers and by 1998 gave cisco de facto monopoly in this critical segment in late march 2000 at the height of the dotcom bubble cisco became the most valuable company in the world with a market capitalization of more than 500billion 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 highend hardware crs1 and software architecture iosxr 20062012 the human network russian president dmitry medvedev and california gov arnold schwarzenegger at cisco 2010 as part of a massive rebranding campaign in 2006 cisco systems adopted the shortened name cisco and created the human network advertising campaign these efforts were meant to make cisco a household branda strategy designed to support the lowend linksys products and future consumer products such as flip video camera acquired by cisco in 2009 on the more traditional business side cisco continued to develop its extensive enterprisefocused routing switching and security portfolio the quickly growing importance of ethernet also influenced the companys product lines prompting the company to morph the successful catalyst 6500 ethernet switch into allpurpose cisco 7600 routing platform however limits of ios and aging crescendo architecture also forced cisco to look at merchant silicon in the carrier ethernet segment this resulted in a new asr9000 product family intended to consolidate companys carrier ethernet and subscriber management business around ezchipbased hardware and iosxr cisco also expanded into new markets by acquisitionone example being a 2009 purchase of mobile specialist starent networks that resulted in asr5000 product line throughout the mid2000s cisco also built a significant presence in india establishing its globalization centre east in bangalore for 1billion and planning that 20 of ciscos leaders would be based there however cisco continued to be challenged by both domestic alcatellucent juniper networks and overseas competitors huawei due to lowerthanexpected profit in 2011 cisco was forced to reduce annual expenses by 1billion the company cut around 3000 employees with an earlyretirement program who accepted buyout and planned to eliminate as many as 10000 jobs around 14 percent of the 73400 total employees before curtailment including juniper and hp on july 24 2012 cisco received approval from the eu to acquire nds a tv software developer for usd 5 billion and flip into the cloud and software market present day former portuguese president cavaco silva former cisco ceo john chambers and cisco senior director of innovation helder antunes during the 2011 presidential visit to the us on july 23 2013 cisco systems announced a definitive agreement to acquire sourcefire for 27 billion on august 14 2013 cisco systems announced it would cut 4000 jobs from its workforce which was roughly 6 starting in 2014 at the end of 2013 cisco announced poor revenue due to depressed sales in emerging markets caused by economic uncertainty and by fears of the national security agency planting backdoors in its products in april 2014 cisco systems announced 150 million to fund earlystage firms around the globe to focus on the internet of everything the investment fund was allocated to investments in iot accelerators and startups such as the alchemist accelerator ayla networks and evrythng after the announcement the alchemist accelerator announced cisco as a strategic partner and launched an individual program specifically focused on advancing the growth of iot startups this new funding increased cisco investments thematic investing to 250 million total adding to the previously announced 100 million commitment to startups focused on the emerging internet of everything ioe market opportunity vp of innovation maciej kranz has led ciscos iot development and expansion as a world expert in the subject matter on august 13 2014 the company announced it was laying off another 6000 workers or 8 of its global workforce as part of a second restructuring on may 4 2015 cisco announced ceo and chairman john chambers would step down as ceo on july 26 2015 but remain chairman chuck robbins senior vice president of worldwide sales operations and 17year cisco veteran will become ceo on july 23 2015 cisco announced the divesture of its television settopbox and cable modem business to technicolor sa for 600 million a division originally formed by ciscos 69 billion purchase of scientific atlanta the deal came as part of ciscos gradual exit from the consumer market and as part of an effort by ciscos new leadership to focus on cloudbased products in enterprise segments cisco indicated that it would still collaborate with technicolor on video products on november 19 2015 cisco alongside arm holdings dell intel microsoft and princeton university founded the openfog consortium to promote interests and development in fog computing in january 2016 cisco invested in velocloud a softwaredefined wan sdwan startup with a cloud offering for configuring and optimizing branch office networks cisco contributed to veloclouds 27 million series c round led by march capital partners cisco is one of two strategic investors in february 2017 cisco premiered a cloudbased secure internet gateway to tackle cloud and mobile security risks the offering cisco umbrella is tailored to provide safe internet access to users who dont use their corporate networks or vpns to connect to remote data centers immediately after reporting their fourth quarter earnings for 2017 ciscos pricepershare value jumped by over 7 while its earnings per share ratio increased from 60 to 61 cents per share due in part to ciscos nominal outperformance of analyst expectations in september 2017 chambers announced that he would step down from the executive chairman role at the end of his term on the board in december 2017 on may 1 2018 cisco systems agreed to buy aidriven business intelligence startup accompany for 270 million on may 10 2018 the company announced that it temporarily paused advertising on youtube as it fears the ads appearing on extremist channels on youtube as of june 2018 cisco systems ranked 444th on forbes global 2000 list with 2213 billion market cap corporate structure media all and cloudlock a cisco cloud computing security subsidiary acquisitions and subsidiaries list of acquisitions by cisco systems cisco acquired a variety of companies to spin products and talent into the company in 19951996 the company completed 11 acquisitions several acquired companies have grown into 1bn business units for cisco including lan switching enterprise voice over internet protocol voip platform webex and home networking the latter came as result of cisco acquiring linksys in 2003 and in 2010 was supplemented with new product line dubbed cisco valet cisco announced on january 12 2005 that it would acquire airespace for us450 million to reinforce the wireless controller product lines cisco announced on january 4 2007 that it would buy ironport in a deal valued at us830 million and completed the acquisition on june 25 2007 ironports senderbase was renamed as sensorbase to take account of the input into this database that other cisco devices provide sensorbase allows these devices to build a risk profile on ip addresses therefore allowing risk profiles to be dynamically created on http sites and smtp email sources cisco announced on march 15 2012 that it would acquire nds group for 5bn in more recent merger deals cisco bought starent networks a mobile packet core company and moto development group a product design consulting firm that helped develop ciscos flip video camera although many buyins such as crescendo networks in 1993 tandberg in 2010 resulted in acquisition of flagship technology to cisco many others have failedpartially or completely cisco campuses in top to bottom bangalore india munich germany and oslo norway in january 2013 cisco systems acquired israeli software maker intucell for around 475 million in cash a move to expand its mobile network management offerings and ubiquisys mobile software in april 2013 cisco acquired cybersecurity firm sourcefire in october 2013 on june 16 2014 cisco announced that it has completed the acquisition of threatgrid a company that provided dynamic malware analysis and threat intelligence technology on june 17 2014 cisco announced its intent to acquire privately held tailf systems a leader in multivendor network service orchestration solutions for traditional and virtualized networks on april 2 2015 cisco announced plans to buy embrane a softwaredefined networking startup the deal will give cisco embranes software platform which provides layer 37 network services for things such as firewalls vpn termination server load balancers and ssl offload on may 7 2015 cisco announced plans to buy tropo a cloud api platform that simplifies the addition of realtime communications and collaboration capabilities within applications on june 30 2015 cisco acquired privately held opendns the company best known for its dns service that adds a level of security by monitoring domain name requests on august 6 2015 cisco announced that it has completed the acquisition of privately held maintenancenet the usbased company best known for its cloudbased contract management platform serviceexchange on september 30 2015 cisco announced its intent to acquire privately held portcullis computer security a ukbased company that provides cybersecurity services to enterprise clients and the government sectors on october 26 2015 cisco announced its intent to acquire parstream a privately held company based in cologne germany that provides an analytics database that allows companies to analyze large amounts of data and store it in near real time anywhere in the network on october 27 2015 cisco announced that it would acquire lancope a company that focuses on detecting threat activity for 4525 million in a cashandequity deal on june 28 2016 cisco announced its intent to acquire cloudlock a privately held cloud security company founded in 2011 by three israeli military veterans the deal was expected to close in the first quarter of 2017 in august 2016 cisco announced it is getting closer to making a deal to acquire springpath the startup whose technology is used in ciscos hyperflex systems cisco already owns an undisclosed stake in the hyperconverged provider in january 2017 cisco announced they would acquire appdynamics a company that monitors application performance for 37 billion the acquisition came just one day before appdynamics was set to ipo one january 26 2017 cisco founded the innovation alliance in germany with eleven other companies bringing together 40 sites and 2000 staff to provide small businesses in germany with expertise october 23 2017 cisco systems announced it would be acquiring broadsoft for 19 billion to further entrench itself in the cloud communication and collaboration area ownership as of 2017 cisco systems shares are mainly held by institutional investors vanguard group blackrock state street corporation and others products and services list of cisco products cisco sg30028 rackmount switch top and cisco epc3010 modem bottom ciscos products and services focus upon three market segmentsenterprise and service provider small business and the home cisco has grown increasingly popular in the asiapacific region over the last three decades competitive advantage 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 microsoft and yahoo to integrate consumer voip services with wireless and cordless phones hosted collaboration solution hcs cisco partners can offer cloudbased services based on ciscos virtualized unified computing system ucs a part of the cisco unified services delivery solution that includes hosted versions of cisco unified communications manager ucm cisco unified contact center cisco unified mobility cisco unified presence cisco unity connection unified messaging and cisco webex meeting center network emergency response a cisco 8851 ip phone as part of its tactical operations initiative cisco maintains several network emergency response vehicles nervs nervs are based at cisco headquarters sites in san jose california and at research triangle park north carolina allowing strategic deployment in north america they can become fully operational within 15 minutes of arrival highcapacity diesel fueltanks allow the largest vehicles to run for up to 72 hours continuously the tactical operations team maintains and deploys smaller more portable communication kits to emergencies outside of north america in 2010 the team deployed to assist in earthquake recovery in haiti and in christchurch new zealand in 2011 they deployed to flooding in brazil as well as in response to the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in japan in 2011 cisco received the innovation preparedness award from the american red cross silicon valley chapter for its development and use of these vehicles in disasters certifications cisco certifications cisco headquarters in the north san jose innovation district san jose california in silicon valley cisco systems also sponsors a line of it professional certifications for cisco products as well as nine different paths routing switching design industrial network network security service provider service provider operations storage networking voice datacenter and wireless a number of specialist technician sales and datacenter certifications are also available cisco also provides training for these certifications via a portal called the cisco networking academy qualifying schools can become members of the cisco networking academy and then provide ccna level or other level courses cisco academy instructors must be ccna certified to be a ccai certified instructor cisco often finds itself involved with technical education with over 10000 partnerships in over 65 countries corporate affairs awards and accolades in 2010 secretary of state hillary clinton awarded cisco the secretary of states award for corporate excellence which was presented in jerusalem by ambassador james b cunningham to cisco senior manager zika abzuk cisco products most notably ip phones and telepresence are frequently sighted in movies and tv series the company itself and its history was featured in the documentary film something ventured which premiered in 2011 cisco was a 200203 recipient of the ron brown award according to a report by technology consulting firm lexinnova cisco is one of the leading recipients of network securityrelated patents with the largest portfolio within other companies 6442 securityrelated patents controversies cisco live 2007 in anaheim california cisco live is the companys annual exposition and conference shareholder relations a class action lawsuit filed on april 20 2001 accused cisco of making misleading statements that were relied on by purchasers of cisco stock and of insider trading intellectual property disputes on december 11 2008 the free software foundation filed suit against cisco regarding ciscos failure to comply with the gpl and lgpl license models and make the applicable source code publicly available censorship in china cisco has been criticized for its involvement in censorship in the peoples republic of china wired news had uncovered a leaked confidential cisco powerpoint presentation that details the commercial opportunities of the golden shield project of internet control in her article journalist sarah stirland accuses cisco of marketing its technology specifically as a tool of repression in may 2011 a group of falun gong practitioners filed a lawsuit under the alien tort statute alleging that cisco knowingly developed and customized its product to assist the chinese government in prosecution and abuse of falun gong practitioners in september 2015 tax fraud investigation on october 16 2007 the brazilian federal police and brazilian receita federal the countrys federal revenue service under the persona operation uncovered an alleged tax fraud scheme employed by cisco systems brazil chief carlos roberto carnevali since 2002 that exempted the company from paying over r15billion us824million in taxes antitrust lawsuit on december 1 2008 multiven filed an antitrust lawsuit in march 2013 multiven filed a complaint both in switzerland and the us accusing cisco of stealing thousands of its proprietary and copyrighted data files from its knowledge base the attack allegedly took place with the use of automated cyber scraping software with the perpetrating ips assigned to cisco cisco denied the claims on july 20 2015 multiven ceo peter alfredadekeye filed a libel lawsuit against cisco for 1 falsely claiming that he or someone under his control at multiven downloaded and stole cisco software five times in 2006 from ciscocom 2 used this lie to a orchestrate his illegal arrest in vancouver canada in 2010 during multiven v cisco and b to fabricate an indictment in august 2011 after the canadian supreme court threw out ciscous governments extradition request and 3 continuing to knowingly propagate this falsehood till today with the core purpose of defaming mr alfredadekeyes character and that of multivens ciscos only competitor in the global multibillion dollar per year services business remotely monitoring users connections ciscos linksys e2700 e3500 e4500 devices have been reported to be remotely updated to a firmware version that forces users to register for a cloud service allows cisco to monitor their network use and ultimately shut down the cloud service account and thus render the affected router unusable firewall backdoor developed by nsa according to the german magazine der spiegel the nsa has developed jetplow for gaining access to asa series 5505 5510 5520 5540 and 5550 and 500series pix firewalls ciscos chief security officer addressed the allegations publicly and denied working with any government to weaken cisco products for exploitation or to implement security back doors a document included in the trove of national security agency files released with glenn greenwalds book no place to hide details how the agencys tailored access operations tao unit and other nsa employees intercept servers routers and other network gear being shipped to organizations targeted for surveillance and install covert firmware onto them before theyre delivered these trojan horse systems were described by an nsa manager as being some of the most productive operations in tao because they preposition access points into hard target networks around the world cisco denied the allegations in a customer document spherix patent suit in march 2014 cisco systems was sued for patent infringement spherix asserts that over 43 billion of ciscos sales infringe on old nortel patents owned by spherix officials with spherix are claiming that a wide range of cisco products from switches to routers infringe on 11 former nortel patents that the company now owns outsourcing and training in palestinian territories in january 2008 cisco announced an investment of 10 million over three years towards job creation and technology sector development in the palestinian territories according to cisco this project was in cooperation with palestinian authority president mahmoud abbas companies portal cisco certifications cisco ios cisco catalyst cisco devnet cisco express forwarding cisco discovery protocol cisco security agent cisco systems vpn client cisco field bunnell d brate a 2001 die cisco story in german moderne industrie isbn3478359953 bunnell d 2000 making the cisco connection the story behind the real internet superpower wiley isbn0471357111 paulson e 2001 inside cisco the real story of sustained ma growth wiley isbn0471414255 slater r 2003 the eye of the storm how john chambers steered cisco through the technology collapse harpercollins isbn0060188871 stauffer d 2001 nothing but net business the cisco way wiley isbn1841120871 waters j k 2002 john chambers and the cisco way navigating through volatility wiley isbn0471008338 young j s 2001 cisco unauthorized inside the highstakes race to own the future prima lifestyles isbn0761527753 wikimedia commons has media related to cisco official website business data for cisco systems inc google finance yahoo finance reuters sec filings precededbygeneral motors dow jones industrial average componentjune 8 2009present incumbent vteantivirus softwarecompaniesmajor ahnlab avast avg technologies avira bitdefender comodo dr web eset fsecure kaspersky mcafee microsoft panda quick heal qihoo 360 sophos symantec trend micro vipre minor agnitum cisco check point clamwin fortinet frisk g data intego kingsoft lavasoft malwarebytes padvish trustport virusblokada webroot zonealarm productsdesktopserver ahnlab v3 internet security avast antivirus avg antivirus avira internet security bitdefender clamwin clam antivirus comodo antivirus comodo internet security dr web eset nod32 fsecure fprot fortinet g data kaspersky antivirus kaspersky internet security mac internet security malwarebytes antimalware mcafee virusscan microsoft security essentials windows defender panda 360 safeguard sophos symantec endpoint protection immunet element antivirus norton antivirus norton internet security spyware doctor virusbarrier trend micro internet security trustport vba32 antivirus zonealarm mobiletablet ahnlab mobile security avast antivirus avg antivirus avira free android security bitdefender mobile security cm security comodo mobile security dr web mobile security suite eset mobile security fsecure mobile security g data internet security mcafee mobile security fireamp mobile trend micro mobile security trustport mobile security virusbarrier related comparison of antivirus software vtecensorship and websitescensorship of facebook file sharing sites github itunes store the pirate bay twitter wikileaks reception in the united states wikipedia youtube in germany censorship by aol apple cisco in china google microsoft in china myspace in china skype in china yahoo facebook youtube twitter websites blocked in belgium mainland china india pakistan russia list south korea north korean united kingdom list vtecomponents of the dow jones industrial average 3m american express apple boeing caterpillar chevron cisco systems cocacola disney dowdupont exxonmobil goldman sachs the home depot intel ibm johnson johnson jpmorgan chase mcdonalds merck co microsoft nike pfizer procter gamble travelers unitedhealth group united technologies verizon communications visa walgreens boots alliance walmart vtecompanies of the nasdaq100 index 21st century fox activision blizzard adobe inc alexion pharmaceuticals align technology alphabet amazoncom american airlines group amgen analog devices apple applied materials asml holding autodesk automatic data processing baidu biogen biomarin pharmaceutical booking holdings broadcom inc cadence design systems celgene cerner charter communications check point cintas cisco systems citrix systems cognizant comcast costco csx ctripcom international dentsply sirona dollar tree ebay electronic arts expedia express scripts facebook fastenal fiserv gilead sciences hasbro henry schein hologic idexx laboratories illumina incyte intel intuit intuitive surgical j b hunt transport services jdcom klatencor kraft heinz lam research liberty global marriott international maxim integrated products mercadolibre microchip technology micron technology microsoft mondelez international monster beverage mylan netease netflix nvidia nxp semiconductors oreilly auto parts paccar paychex paypal pepsico qualcomm qurate retail group regeneron ross stores seagate technology shire sirius xm holdings skyworks solutions starbucks symantec synopsys tmobile us taketwo interactive tesla inc texas instruments ulta beauty verisk analytics vertex pharmaceuticals vodafone walgreens boots alliance western digital workday wynn resorts xilinx vtemajor personal computer server and mainframe hardware companiescompanies with an annual revenue of over us3 billionpersonal computersand servers acer apple inc asus dell fujitsu huawei hp lenovo lg electronics microsoft nec panasonic razer inc samsung electronics toshiba vaio servers only cisco systems hpe ibm inspur oracle corporation mainframes fujitsu hpe ibm see also largest it companies list of computer hardware manufacturers categoryhome computer hardware companies categoryserver hardware categorymainframe computers vtemajor networking hardware companiescompanies with an annual revenue of over us3 billion avaya cisco systems ericsson fujitsu hewlett packard enterprise huawei juniper networks motorola solutions nec nokia qualcomm zte see also largest it companies categorynetworking hardware companies 