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Cisco System by wikipedia

Cisco Systems

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Cisco" redirects here. For other uses, see Cisco (disambiguation).
Not to be confused with Sysco, Sisqó, Sisko, or Certis CISCO.
Cisco Systems, Inc.
Public
Traded as NASDAQCSCO
Dow Jones Industrial Average Component
S&P 500 Component
NASDAQ-100 Component
Industry Networking equipment
Founded San Francisco, California, U.S.
(1984; 31 years ago)
Founder Leonard Bosack
Sandy Lerner
Headquarters San Jose, California, U.S.[1]
Coordinates Coordinates: 37.4106394°N 121.958166°W
Area served
Worldwide
Key people
Chuck Robbins (CEO)
John Chambers (Executive Chairman)
Products Networking Device
Network Management
Cisco IOS and NX-OS Software
Interface and Module
Optical networking
Storage area networks
Wireless, Telepresence, VOIP, Security
Datacenter
List of Cisco Products
Revenue Decrease US$ 47.142 billion (2014)[2]
Decrease US$ 9.345 billion (2014)[2]
Decrease US$ 7.853 billion (2014)[2]
Total assets Increase US$ 105.134 billion (2014)[2]
Total equity Decrease US$ 56.654 billion (2014)[2]
Number of employees
70,112 (2015)[3]
Subsidiaries List of acquisitions
Website Cisco.com
Cisco Systems, Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in San Jose, California, that designs, manufactures, and sells networking equipment.[4] The stock was added to the Dow Jones Industrial Average on June 8, 2009, and is also included in the S&P 500 Index, the Russell 1000 Index, NASDAQ-100 Index and the Russell 1000 Growth Stock Index.[5]

Contents

History

One of the many buildings on the Cisco Systems campus in San Jose

1984–1995: early years

Cisco Systems was founded in December 1984 by Leonard Bosack, who was in charge of the Stanford University computer science department's computers, and Sandy Lerner, who managed the Graduate School of Business' computers.
Despite founding Cisco in 1984, Bosack, along with Kirk Lougheed, continued to work at Stanford on Cisco's first product. It consisted of exact replicas of Stanford's "Blue Box" router and a stolen[6] copy of the University's multiple-protocol 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 company's first CEO was Bill Graves, who held the position from 1987 to 1988.[7] In 1988, John Morgridge was appointed CEO.
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 its early years. The logo is intended to depict the two towers of the Golden Gate Bridge.[8]
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; upon hearing the news, her husband Bosack resigned in protest. The couple walked away from Cisco with $170 million, 70% of which was committed to their own charity.[9]
Although Cisco was not the first company to develop and sell dedicated network nodes,[10] it was one of the first to sell commercially successful routers supporting multiple network protocols.[11] Classical, CPU-based 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 unchanged—a rarity in high-tech 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, high-capacity 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 Mazzola's 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 architecture—the former was slow and complex, the latter was fast but simple. This philosophy dominated the company's product lines throughout the 1990s.
In 1995, John Morgridge was succeeded by John Chambers.[12]

1996–2009: Internet and silicon intelligence

The phenomenal growth of the Internet in mid-to-late 1990s quickly changed the telecom landscape. As the Internet Protocol (IP) became widely adopted, the importance of multi-protocol 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 dot-com bubble, Cisco became the most valuable company in the world, with a market capitalization of more than US$500 billion.[13][14] In July 2014, with a market cap of about US$129 billion,[15] it is still one of the most valuable companies.[16]
Meanwhile, the growth of Internet bandwidth requirements kept challenging traditional, software-based packet processing architectures.
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 high-end hardware CRS-1 and software architecture IOS-XR.

2006–2012: The Human Network

As part of a massive rebranding campaign in 2006, Cisco Systems adopted the shortened name "Cisco" and created "The Human Network" advertising campaign.[17] These efforts were meant to make Cisco a "household" brand—a strategy designed to support the low-end 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 enterprise-focused routing, switching and security portfolio. The quickly growing importance of Ethernet also influenced the company's product lines, prompting the company to morph the successful Catalyst 6500 Ethernet switch into all-purpose Cisco 7600 routing platform.[18] 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 company's carrier ethernet and subscriber management business around EZChip-based hardware and IOS-XR. Cisco also expanded into new markets by acquisition—one example being a 2009 purchase of mobile specialist Starent Networks that resulted in ASR5000 product line.
A Cisco facility in Chennai, India. India is one of the company's largest overseas markets and production centers.
Throughout the mid-2000s, Cisco also built a significant presence in India, establishing its Globalization Centre East in Bengaluru for $1 billion, and planning that 20% of Cisco's leaders would be based there.[19]
However, Cisco continued to be challenged by both domestic Alcatel-Lucent, Juniper Networks and overseas competitors Huawei. Due to lower-than-expected profit in 2011, Cisco was forced to reduce annual expenses by $1 billion. The company cut around 3,000 employees with an early-retirement program who accepted buyout and planned to eliminate as many as 10,000 jobs (around 14 percent of the 73,400 total employees before curtailment).[20][21] During the 2011 analyst call, Cisco's CEO John Chambers called out several competitors by name,[22] including Juniper and HP.
On 24 July 2012, Cisco received approval from the EU to acquire NDS (a TV software developer) for USD 5 billion.[23] This acquisition signaled the end of the "The Human Network" strategy as Cisco found itself backing off from household hardware like Linksys[24] and Flip into the cloud and software market.

2013–Present: The Internet of Everything

Cisco launches a global rebranding campaign for the first time in six years with its "TOMORROW starts here" and "Internet of Everything" advertising campaigns. These efforts were designed to position Cisco for the next ten years into a global leader in connecting the previously unconnected and facilitate the IP address connectivity of people, data, processes and things through cloud computing applications and services.
On July 23, 2013, Cisco Systems announced a definitive agreement to acquire Sourcefire for $2.7 billion.[25]
On August 14, 2013, Cisco Systems announced it is going to cut 4,000 jobs, which is roughly 6% of the company, starting in 2014.[26]
Cisco is opening an Internet of Everything research centre in Toronto, Ontario.
In April, 2014, Cisco Systems announced $150 Million to fund early-stage 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.
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.[27]
On August 13, 2014, the company announced it was laying off another 6,000 workers or 8% of its global workforce, as part of a second restructuring.[28]
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 Operations and 17-year Cisco veteran, will become CEO.[29]

Media and awards

Cisco products, most notably IP phones and Telepresence, are frequently sighted in movies and TV series.[30] The company itself and its history was featured in the documentary film Something Ventured which premiered in 2011.
Cisco was a 2002–03 recipient of the Ron Brown Award,[31][32] a U.S. presidential honor to recognize companies "for the exemplary quality of their relationships with employees and communities". Cisco commonly stays on top of Fortune "100 Best Companies to work for", with position No. 20 in 2011.[33]

Acquisitions

Cisco acquired a variety of companies to spin products and talent into the company. In 1995–1996 the company completed 11 acquisitions.[34] Several acquisitions, such as Stratacom, were the biggest deals in the industry when they occurred.[35] During the Internet boom in 1999, the company acquired Cerent Corporation, a start-up company located in Petaluma, California, for about US$7 billion.[36] It was the most expensive acquisition made by Cisco to that date, and only the acquisition of Scientific Atlanta has been larger.[37] In 1999 Cisco also acquired stake for $1 Billion in KPMG Consulting to enable establishing Internet firm Metrius founded by Keyur Patel of Fuse.[38] 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 4, 2007 that it would buy IronPort in a deal valued at US$830 million[39][40] and completed the acquisition on June 25, 2007.[41] IronPort was best known for its IronPort AntiSpam, its SenderBase email reputation service, and its email security appliances. Accordingly, IronPort was integrated into the Cisco Security business unit.[42] Ironport's 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.[43]
Cisco announced on March 15, 2012 that it would acquire NDS Group for $5B.[44][45] The transaction was completed on July 30, 2012.[4][46]
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 Cisco's Flip video camera.[47][48] Also in 2010, Cisco became a key stakeholder in e-Skills Week. In March 2011, Cisco completed the acquisition of privately held network configuration and change management software company Pari Networks.[49]
Although many buy-ins (such as Crescendo Networks in 1993, Tandberg in 2010) resulted in acquisition of flagship technology to Cisco, many others have failed—partially or completely.[50] For instance, in 2010 Cisco occupied a meaningful share of the packet-optical market,[51] revenues were still not on par with US$7 billion price tag paid in 1999 for Cerent. Some of acquired technologies (such as Flip from Pure Digital) saw their product lines terminated.[52][53]
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.[54][55] In the same month, Cisco Systems acquired Cognitive Security, a company focused on Cyber Threat Protection. Cisco also acquired SolveDirect (cloud services) in March 2013[56] and Ubiquisys (mobile software) in April 2013.
Cisco acquired cyber-security firm Sourcefire, in October 2013.[57]
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.[58]
On June 17, 2014, Cisco announced its intent to acquire privately held Tail-f Systems, a leader in multi-vendor network service orchestration solutions for traditional and virtualized networks.[59]
On April 2, 2015, Cisco announced plans to buy Embrane, a software-defined networking startup. The deal will give Cisco Embrane's software platform, which provides layer 3-7 network services for things such as firewalls, VPN termination, server load balancers, and SSL offload.[60]

Products and services

Cisco's products and services focus upon three market segments—Enterprise and Service Provider, Small Business and the Home.

Corporate market

Corporate market refers to enterprise networking and service providers.
Borderless networks
[61] for their range of routers, switches, wireless systems, security systems, WAN acceleration, energy and building management systems and media aware networks.[62]
Collaboration
IP video and phones, TelePresence, HealthPresence, Unified Communications, Call Center systems, Enterprise social networks and Mobile applications[63]
Datacenter and Virtualization
Unified Computing, Unified Fabric, Data Centre Switching, Storage Networking and Cloud Computing services.[64]
IP NGN (Next Generation Networks)
High-end routing and switching for fixed and mobile service provider networks, broadcast video contribution/distribution, entitlement and content delivery systems.[65]

Small businesses

Cisco small business SG300-28 28-port Gigabit Ethernet rackmount switch and its internals
Small businesses include home businesses and (usually technology-based) startups.[66]
Routers and switches
The machines that route and redirect packets across a network, including those for networks of smart meters.[67]
Security and surveillance
IP cameras, data and network security etc.[68]
Voice and conferencing
VOIP phones and gateway-systems, WebEx, video conferencing
Wireless
WiFi Access points
Network storage systems
Persistent people storage on networks, either in the traditional sense or in a cloud-like manner.

Home user

Home user refers to individuals or families who require these kinds of services.[69]
Broadband
Broadband refers to cable modems.
Flip Video
With the acquisition of Pure Digital Technologies, Cisco began to sell a line of video recording devices called "Flip Video" that had been Pure Digital's only line of products. This line of products was not as popular as Cisco had thought it would have been, and on April 12, 2011, Cisco announced they were discontinuing all Flip camera production.[70][71] Cisco ūmi product line—video conferencing for home also proved to be a short-lived bid for consumer multimedia market and did survive in Cisco product lineup.[72]

Hardware

A Cisco ASM/2-32EM router deployed at CERN in 1987
A Cisco 7960G IP Phone
Cisco UCS blade servers
Data
  • Datacenter products: Nexus Switches (1000v, 2000, 3000, 4000, 5000, 6000,7000, 9000), MDS, Unified Computing System (UCS)
  • Routers, including: 800 Series, Integrated Services Router (ISR) (1800, 2800, 3800), ISR G2 (1900, 2900, 3900), 2500 Series, 7200, 7600, 12000, ASR (900, 1000, 9000), Network Convergence System (NCS) 6000, and Carrier Routing System (CRS-1, CRS-3, CRS-X)
  • Security appliances: ASA 5500, PIX 500 series, Cisco Security Manager, Email Security Appliance (ESA), Web Security Appliance (WSA), Content Security Management Appliance (SMA)
  • Catalyst switches: 1900 Series, 2900 / 2950 / 2960 / 3500XL Series, 3550 / 3750 Series, 3000 Series, Catalyst 4500/4900, 5000/5500 Series, 6500 Series, 6800 Series
  • Teleworker/Remote Connectivity—Cisco LAN2LAN Personal Office for ISDN, VPN 3000 Concentrators
  • Cisco Wireless LAN products—Access Points, PCI/PCMCIA/USB Wireless LAN Adaptors, Wireless LAN Controllers (WLC), Wireless LAN Solutions Engines (WLSE), Wireless Control System (WCS), Location Appliances, Long range antennas.
Telephony Products
  • Collaboration Systems—Cisco TelePresence, (Cisco Manufacturing Mobile Video Collaboration with Librestream, Cisco acquired Tandberg, the world leader in Telepresence systems)[73]
  • IP Telephony (VoIP) Servers and Appliances
  • Cisco Unified IP Phones—Wireless IP Phone 7920, 7945, 7965, 7942, 8900 series, 9900 series, 6900 series
Servers / Application Appliances
Experimental
  • CLEO (Cisco Low Earth Orbit router)
  • IRIS (Cisco Internet Routing in Space)
Other Products
  • Cisco Cius: a new Android-based collaboration tablet (now discontinued)
  • Set Top Boxes (High Definition PVRs)—Cable/IP
  • Flip pocket camera (Discontinued in April 2011)[74]

Software

Operating Systems
VPN/Remote Connectivity
Telephony/VoIP
  • Cisco Call Manager / Call Manager Express
  • Cisco Unified Communications Manager
  • Cisco Unified Operations Manager (CUOM)—is a NMS for voice. It features real-time monitoring of all system elements, and performs automatic discovery for the entire system and provides contextual diagnostics for troubleshooting.
  • Cisco IP Communicator is a VoIP softphone software application. It can register with a Cisco Unified Communications Manager or Cisco Unified Communications Manager Express using either SIP or Cisco's proprietary Skinny Client Control Protocol.
  • WebEx Collaboration Tools
Other
  • Cisco Active Network Abstraction
  • Cisco Fabric Manager
  • Data Center Management and Automation—Cisco Intelligent Automation
  • Cisco Tidal Enterprise Scheduler
  • CiscoView
  • CiscoWorks Network Management software
  • Cisco Eos
  • Packet Tracer, didactic network simulator
  • Cisco Network Magic Pro
  • Cisco Quad
  • Cisco Security Manager
  • Cisco SDM
  • PostOffice protocol (not to be confused with POP3, SMTP, or other mail delivery protocols). It is a Cisco proprietary protocol that runs over UDP on port 45000.[75] It provides a communications vehicle between the sensors and the Director platform.

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 cloud-based services based on Cisco's 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.[76]

Network Emergency Response

The company maintains several Network Emergency Response Vehicles (NERV)s. The vehicles are maintained and deployed by Cisco employees during natural disasters and other public crises. The vehicles are self-contained and provide wired and wireless services including voice, and radio interoperability, voice over IP, network based video surveillance and secured high definition video conferencing for leaders and first responders in crisis areas with up to 3 Mbit/s of bandwidth (up and down) via a 1.8-meter satellite antenna.[77]
NERVs are based at Cisco headquarters sites in San Jose, California and Research Triangle Park, North Carolina allowing strategic deployment in North America and are capable of being fully operational within 15 minutes of arrival. [57][58] High capacity diesel fuel tanks allow the largest vehicles to run for up to 72 hours continuously.[78] The NERV has been deployed to incidents such as the October 2007 California wildfires; hurricanes Gustav, Ike, and Katrina; the 2010 San Bruno gas pipeline explosion, tornado outbreaks in North Carolina and Alabama in 2011; and Hurricane Sandy in 2012.[79][80]
The team maintains and deploys smaller more portable communication kits which are deployed to emergencies outside of North America. In 2010, the team deployed to assist in earthquake recover in Haiti and Christchurch, New Zealand. In 2011, they deployed to flooding in Brazil, as well as the tsunami in Japan.[81]
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.[82]