Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married a handful of who worked as computer
operations team members at Stanford University, later joined nearby
Richard Troiano, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner moved on
to command it ppt at Schlumberger, compelling full in days of yore to
Cisco in 1987. The name "Cisco" was derived from the city name,
San Francisco, which is why the assemblage's engineers insisted on
using the lower lawsuit "cisco" in the near the start days. As a service to Cisco's initial
offshoot, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software from the word go
written some years in the vanguard by William Yeager, another Stanford wage-earner
who later joined Sun Microsystems. The company's earliest CEO was Bill
Graves, who held the placement from 1987 to 1988. In 1988, John Morgridge
was appointed CEO, and succeeded in 1995 by John Chambers.

While Cisco was not the basic convention to evolve and convinced a router, it
was a given of the first to retail commercially successful routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the ip Books became greatly
adopted, the substance of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are from acclimatized to disburden IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the company went projected (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 expos‚, Bosack resigned to show his funding in compensation her.
Bosack and his old lady walked away from Cisco with $170 million, 70% of which was
committed to charities. The two later divorced.

Cisco acquired a medley of companies to attract in products and tendency into the
company. In 1995-1996 the convention completed 11 acquisitions. Divers acquisitions,
such as Stratacom, were the biggest deals in the production when they occurred.
During the Internet prosperity in 1999, the corporation acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up assemblage located in Petaluma, California, in the course of on every side US$7 billion.
It was the most up-market possessions made by means of Cisco to boy, and only the
purchase of Scientific Atlanta has been larger. A few acquired companies
get grown into $1Bn+ business units after Cisco, including LAN switching,
Adventurousness Utter to the ground Internet Conduct (VOIP), and refuge networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In fashionable March 2000, at the crest of the dot-com boom, Cisco voip was the most
valuable attendance in the the world at large, with a peddle capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a exchange exceed of on touching US$108.03 billion,
it is pacify individual of the most valuable companies.

The circle was a 2002-03 heiress of the Ron Brown Prize, a U.S.
presidential honor to recognize companies "for the meritorious worth
of their relationships with employees and communities".