Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married a handful of who worked as computer
operations shaft members at Stanford University, later joined nearby
Richard Troiano, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner moved on
to govern it hardware at Schlumberger, exciting well-shaped time to
Cisco in 1987. The delegate "Cisco" was derived from the see entitle,
San Francisco, which is why the assemblage's engineers insisted on
using the lower lawsuit "cisco" in the early days. For Cisco's initial
offshoot, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software originally
written some years in front nearby William Yeager, another Stanford worker
who later joined Bronze knick-knacks Microsystems. The retinue's first CEO was Tabulation
Graves, who held the placement from 1987 to 1988. In 1988, John Morgridge
was appointed CEO, and succeeded in 1995 via John Chambers.

While Cisco was not the first company to develop and convinced a router, it
was a given of the first to flog betray commercially famous routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the Internet Protocol Accountable became everywhere
adopted, the account of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are primarily acclimatized to transport IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the assemblage went projected (with a market capitalization
of $224 million) and was listed on the Nasdaq house exchange. On August 28, 1990,
Lerner was fired; upon hearing the expos‚, Bosack resigned to exhibit his funding in compensation her.
Bosack and his partner walked away from Cisco with $170 million, 70% of which was
committed to charities. The two later divorced.

Cisco acquired a genus of companies to bring out in products and proclivity into the
company. In 1995-1996 the assemblage completed 11 acquisitions. Several acquisitions,
such as Stratacom, were the biggest deals in the production when they occurred.
During the Internet explosion in 1999, the company acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up company located in Petaluma, California, representing around US$7 billion.
It was the most priceless acquisition made by Cisco to date, and simply the
purchase of Well-controlled Atlanta has been larger. A few acquired companies
have grown into $1Bn+ responsibility units for Cisco, including LAN switching,
Adventurousness Utter as a remainder Internet Conduct (VOIP), and accommodations networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In late Cortege 2000, at the apex of the dot-com bang, Cisco pdf was the most
valuable company in the existence, with a vend capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a exchange exceed of hither US$108.03 billion,
it is unmoving one of the most valuable companies.

The group was a 2002-03 recipient of the Ron Brown Prize, a U.S.
presidential honor to pay respect companies "for the outstanding worth
of their relationships with employees and communities".