Corporate history of Cisco Systems Inc.

Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married couple who worked as computer operations staff members 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. The company's first CEO was Bill Graves, who held the position from 1987 to 1988.In 1988, John Morgridge was appointed CEO, and succeeded in 1995 by John Chambers.

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 IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the company 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 charities.

Cisco acquired a variety of companies to bring in products and talent into the company. In 1995-1996 the company completed 11 acquisitions. Several acquisitions, such as Stratacom, were the biggest deals in the industry when they occurred. During the Internet boom in 1999, the company acquired Cerent Corporation, a start-up company located in Petaluma, California, for about US$7 billion. It was the most expensive acquisition made by Cisco to date, and only the acquisition of Scientific Atlanta has been larger. Several acquired companies have grown into $1Bn+ business units for Cisco, including LAN switching, Enterprise Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP), and home networking. Cisco acquired Linksys in 2003.

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 July 2009, with a market cap of about US$108.03 billion, it is still one of the most valuable companies.

The company was a 2002-03 recipient of the Ron Brown Award,a U.S. presidential honor to recognize companies "for the exemplary quality of their relationships with employees and communities".

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.While Cisco denied all allegations in the suit, on August 18, 2006, Cisco's liability insurers, its directors, and officers paid the plaintiffs US$91.75 million to settle the suit. On December 11, 2008, the Free Software Foundation filed suit against Cisco regarding Cisco's failure to comply with the GPL and LGPL license models and make the applicable source code publicly available.On May 20, 2009, Cisco settled this lawsuit by complying with FSF licensing terms and making a monetary contribution to the FSF.

In 2010, Cisco bought Starent Networks, a mobile technology company and Moto Development Group, a product design consulting firm that helped develop Cisco's Flip video camera. Also in 2010, Cisco was a key stakeholder in e-Skills Week.

The company has built its Globalization Centre East in Bangalore for $1 billion and 20% of Cisco's leaders will be based there.

In March 2011, Cisco completed the acquisition of privately held network configuration and change management solutions company Pari Networks.

On April 12, 2011, Cisco announced they were discontinuing all Flip camera production. It will no longer carry the making of Flip cameras.

Cisco and its history was featured in the documentary film Something Ventured which premiered in 2011.

May 2011: Due to lower than expected profit, Cisco System Inc. will cut annual expenses by $1 billion. It will cut 4,000 to 5,000 of the company's 73,400 employees, mainly by an early retirement program