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Cisco history
Cisco company history timeline
Cisco Systems was founded in December 1984 by Sandy Lerner along with her husband Leonard Bosack.
In 1985 Cisco sold its first product, a network interface card for Digital Equipment Corporation’s computers.
In 1985, Bosack and Stanford employee Kirk Lougheed began a project to formally network Stanford's campus.
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.
But soon they were able to create their own Cisco IOS. In 1987 they were able to acquire the original license for the router and another two computer boards from Stanford University.
In the year 1987, they were having sales of nearly $2 million per month.
In 1988, the founders turned to Sequoia Capital to provide them with extra cash to run the company.
Although sales were strong, the rapid expansion of the business caused a cash shortage, and in 1988 Cisco's husband-and-wife co-founders Leonard Bosack and Sandra Lerner were forced to enter into an agreement with venture capitalist Donald T. Valentine of Sequoia Capital.
In 1988, the company began to target its internetworking routers at mainstream corporations with geographically dispersed branches that used different networks.
By 1989, with only three products and 111 employees, Cisco’s revenues were $27 million.
On February 16, 1990, Cisco Systems went public with a market capitalization of $224 million, and was listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange.
On August 28, 1990, Lerner was fired.
Chambers, who had previous stints at IBM and Wang Laboratories before joining Cisco in 1991, stepped up the company's acquisition pace to keep ahead of its rivals and to fill in gaps in its product line, aiming to provide one-stop networking shopping to its customers.
Although Cisco worked to continuously update and improve its routers, in 1992 the introduction of asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) technology, which could manage data without a router, became a serious threat to Cisco's future.
In 1992, Fortune magazine rated Cisco as the second fastest growing company in the United States.
In 1992, Cisco entered new distribution agreements with Bell Atlantic Corp. and United States West Information Systems Inc.
Olivetti of Italy agreed to market Cisco's products under a value-added reseller agreement late in 1992.
In February 1993, Cisco announced a strategy to include ATM among the protocols supported by its products.
The company introduced the improved 7000 model router in 1993, and that same year it began acquiring other companies.
In early 1993, Cisco entered into a joint development project with AT & T and StrataCom to develop standards that would ensure that ATM operated within existing Frame Relay networks.
In fiscal 1994, Cisco introduced its first ATM switch.
Early in 1994, Cisco announced a new networking architecture, CiscoFusion, to provide clients with a gradual transition from routers to the new switched networking technologies of ATM and LAN switching.
In 1995, John Morgridge was succeeded by John T. Chambers.
1996: Company acquires StrataCom, Inc., maker of switching equipment, for $4.67 billion.
These acquisitions offered Cisco the opportunity to position itself for the eventual market transition from routers to the newer technology of ATM and LAN. By 1997 Cisco was the supplier for 80 percent of the Internet routers in the world.
Thirty-three patents and many leading-edge products later, and with offices worldwide, in 1997 the company introduced its first voice-over-IP and fax-over-IP products as well as a line of cable data products.
The largest of these was the April 1998 purchase of NetSpeed, Inc., a specialist in digital subscriber line (DSL) equipment, an emerging technology providing homes and small offices with high-speed access to the Internet via existing telephone lines.
The acquisitions of LightSpeed International, Inc. in April 1998 and Selsius Systems, Inc. in November 1998 helped Cisco gain a significant presence in the Internet telephony sector.
In 1998 Cisco bought Selsius Systems, a company with expertise in Internet telephony that helped Cisco take a dominant position in VoIP technology.
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 1998 the company set the record for shortest time to achieve $100 billion market capitalization after going public, a feat Cisco completed in just eight and a half years, which broke the 11-year record previously set by Microsoft.
By 1999, Cisco had reached sales revenue of $12 billion within 15 years of its inception.
In late March 2000, at the height of the dot-com bubble, Cisco became the most valuable company in the world, with a market capitalization of more than $500 billion.
In June of that year, Cisco introduced a new low-end, lower-priced product line, the Cisco 2000 router family.
Among the 24 companies acquired during 2000 are ExiO Communications Inc., Radiata Inc., Active Voice Corporation, CAIS Software Solutions, Vovida Networks Inc., IPCell Technologies Inc., PixStream Inc., IPMobile Inc., and NuSpeed Internet Systems Inc.
The problems materialized in the third quarter of fiscal 2001 when the company posted a loss of $2.7 billion.
Despite its fall from spectacular growth to a net loss in 2001, most analysts remain cautiously interested in Cisco's stock possibilities, who consider the company's excellent balance sheet along with its large market share as significant advances working in Cisco's favor.
long, timothy. "content networking." computer reseller news, 8 april 2002.
"john chambers: cisco rides again." business week, 20 may 2002.
stires, david. "the tech wasteland." fortune, 27 may 2002.
"cisco systems inc." multex investor, 2002. available at http://www.multex.com.
In 2004, Cisco also started the migration to new high-end hardware CRS-1 and software architecture IOS-XR.
Through acquisitions and through strategic alliances with such industry giants as Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard Company, and Intel Corporation, Chambers aimed to increase Cisco Systems' revenues to $50 billion by 2005.
In 2006 Cisco introduced TelePresence, an elaboration of videoconferencing that is intended to allow people in different locations to interact as if they were in the same place.
As part of a rebranding campaign in 2006, Cisco Systems adopted the shortened name "Cisco" and created "The Human Network" advertising campaign.
Jump up ↑ "Report: sales of carrier-grade routers and switches up 16% in 2007". zdnet.com.
Cisco also expanded into new markets by acquisition—one example being a 2009 purchase of mobile specialist Starent Networks.
Due to lower-than-expected profit in 2011, Cisco reduced annual expenses by $1 billion.
On July 24, 2012, Cisco received approval from the EU to acquire NDS (a TV software developer) for US$5 billion.
On July 23, 2013, Cisco Systems announced a definitive agreement to acquire Sourcefire for $2.7 billion.
In 2013, Cisco sold its Linksys home-router unit to Belkin International Inc., signaling a shift to sales to businesses rather than consumers.
In April 2014, Cisco announced funding for early-stage firms to focus on the Internet of Things.
As of July 2014, with a market cap of about US$129 billion, it was still one of the most valuable companies.
On November 4, 2014, Cisco announced an investment in Stratoscale.
On May 4, 2015, Cisco announced CEO and Chairman John Chambers would step down as CEO on July 26, 2015, but remain chairman.
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 software-defined WAN (SD-WAN) start-up with a cloud offering for configuring and optimizing branch office networks.
In February 2017, Cisco launched a cloud-based secure internet gateway, called Cisco Umbrella, to provide safe internet access to users who do not use their corporate networks or VPNs to connect to remote data centers.
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.
Immediately after reporting their fourth-quarter earnings for 2017, Cisco's price-per-share value jumped by over 7%, while its Earnings per share ratio increased from 60 to 61 cents per share, due in part to Cisco's outperformance of analyst expectations.
Reuters reported that "Cisco Systems Inc’s (CSCO.O) product revenue in Russia grew 20 percent in 2017, ahead of Cisco’s technology product revenue growth in the other so-called BRIC countries of Brazil, China and India."
On May 1, 2018, Cisco Systems agreed to buy AI-driven business intelligence startup Accompany for $270 million.
In 2019, Cisco acquired CloudCherry, a customer experience management company, and Voicea, an artificial intelligence company.
In March 2020, SVP and GM of Enterprise Networking David Goeckeler left to become CEO of Western Digital Corp. and was replaced by Todd Nightingale, head of Cisco Meraki.
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Cisco competitors
| Company name | Founded date | Revenue | Employee size | Job openings |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Microsoft | 1975 | $245.1B | 182,268 | 3,483 |
| IBM | 1911 | $62.8B | 270,000 | 3,560 |
| Salesforce | 1999 | $37.9B | 56,606 | 1,111 |
| Intel | 1968 | $53.1B | 121,100 | 381 |
| Oracle | 1977 | $53.0B | 132,000 | 56,031 |
| Meta | 2004 | $164.5B | 71,970 | 11,222 |
| NetApp | 1992 | $6.3B | 10,500 | 305 |
| Northrop Grumman | 1939 | $41.0B | 97,000 | 2,917 |
| Lockheed Martin | 1995 | $71.0B | 115,000 | 5,250 |
| Lancope | - | $15.4M | 750 | 29 |
Cisco history FAQs
Zippia gives an in-depth look into the details of Cisco, including salaries, political affiliations, employee data, and more, in order to inform job seekers about Cisco. The employee data is based on information from people who have self-reported their past or current employments at Cisco. The data on this page is also based on data sources collected from public and open data sources on the Internet and other locations, as well as proprietary data we licensed from other companies. Sources of data may include, but are not limited to, the BLS, company filings, estimates based on those filings, H1B filings, and other public and private datasets. While we have made attempts to ensure that the information displayed are correct, Zippia is not responsible for any errors or omissions or for the results obtained from the use of this information. None of the information on this page has been provided or approved by Cisco. The data presented on this page does not represent the view of Cisco and its employees or that of Zippia.
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