Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married couple who worked as computer
operations stave members at Stanford University, later joined by
Richard Troiano, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner moved on
to govern comp documents at Schlumberger, stirring full time to
Cisco in 1987. The big name "Cisco" was derived from the municipality entitle,
San Francisco, which is why the presence's engineers insisted on
using the cut instance "cisco" in the prehistoric days. For Cisco's initial
product, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software from the beginning
written some years earlier nearby William Yeager, another Stanford wage-earner
who later joined Bronze knick-knacks Microsystems. The presence's foremost CEO was Bill
Graves, who held the placement from 1987 to 1988. In 1988, John Morgridge
was appointed CEO, and succeeded in 1995 past John Chambers.

While Cisco was not the beginning party to expose and give away a router, it
was a given of the oldest to sell commercially in the money routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the Internet Protocol Manual became everywhere
adopted, the substance of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are first of all acclimatized to deliver IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the company went public (with a stock exchange capitalization
of $224 million) and was listed on the Nasdaq house exchange. On August 28, 1990,
Lerner was fired; upon hearing the newscast, Bosack resigned to express his shore up in compensation her.
Bosack and his the missis walked away from Cisco with $170 million, 70% of which was
committed to charities. The two later divorced.

Cisco acquired a selection of companies to bring in products and proclivity into the
company. In 1995-1996 the company completed 11 acquisitions. Several acquisitions,
such as Stratacom, were the biggest deals in the effort when they occurred.
During the Internet explosion in 1999, the company acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up society located in Petaluma, California, representing about US$7 billion.
It was the most priceless acquirement made at hand Cisco to boy, and simply the
acquisition of Scientific Atlanta has been larger. Several acquired companies
have grown into $1Bn+ subject units for the purpose Cisco, including LAN switching,
Enterprise Utter over Internet Protocol (VOIP), and refuge networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In recent Parade 2000, at the apogee of the dot-com bang, Cisco system was the most
valuable company in the existence, with a peddle capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a vend cover humbly of down US$108.03 billion,
it is unmoving individual of the most valuable companies.

The circle was a 2002-03 receiver of the Ron Brown Prize, a U.S.
presidential honor to concede companies "in search the outstanding worth
of their relationships with employees and communities".