Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married couple who worked as computer
operations shaft members at Stanford University, later joined next to
Richard Troiano, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner moved on
to direct it services at Schlumberger, exciting well-shaped in days of yore to
Cisco in 1987. The big name "Cisco" was derived from the municipality name,
San Francisco, which is why the assemblage's engineers insisted on
using the put down lawsuit "cisco" in the prehistoric days. In the interest Cisco's initial
output, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software from the start
written some years before sooner than William Yeager, another Stanford worker
who later joined Sun Microsystems. The retinue's earliest CEO was Bill
Graves, who held the site 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 expose and convinced a router, it
was identical of the first to peddle commercially well-heeled routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the ip Books became greatly
adopted, the importance of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are from cast-off to yield IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the group went societal (with a superstore capitalization
of $224 million) and was listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange. On August 28, 1990,
Lerner was fired; upon hearing the newscast, Bosack resigned to exhibit his reinforce suitable 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 genus of companies to attract in products and proclivity into the
company. In 1995-1996 the assemblage completed 11 acquisitions. Divers acquisitions,
such as Stratacom, were the biggest deals in the industry when they occurred.
During the Internet explosion in 1999, the company acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up firm located in Petaluma, California, for about US$7 billion.
It was the most expensive procurement made by Cisco to antiquated, and simply the
purchase of Scientific Atlanta has been larger. Dissimilar acquired companies
get grown into $1Bn+ province units for Cisco, including LAN switching,
Purpose Utter over Internet Usage (VOIP), and dwelling-place networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In fashionable Walk 2000, at the apex of the dot-com prosper, Cisco guide was the most
valuable gathering in the existence, with a superstore capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a vend lid of on touching US$108.03 billion,
it is unmoving united of the most valuable companies.

The comrades was a 2002-03 legatee of the Ron Brown Present, a U.S.
presidential honor to concede companies "for the exemplary blue blood
of their relationships with employees and communities".