Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married yoke who worked as computer
operations team members at Stanford University, later joined next to
Richard Troiano, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner moved on
to tell comp software at Schlumberger, exciting occupied in days of yore to
Cisco in 1987. The pre-eminence "Cisco" was derived from the burg luminary,
San Francisco, which is why the presence's engineers insisted on
using the cut instance "cisco" in the antiquated days. For Cisco's pre-eminent
offering, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software originally
written some years in front nearby William Yeager, another Stanford employee
who later joined Brown Microsystems. The assemblage's first 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 first company to bring out and convinced a router, it
was identical of the first to flog betray commercially famous routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the Internet Protocol Documents became thoroughly
adopted, the note 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 superstore 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 show his funding in search 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 bring out 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 blast in 1999, the performers acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up firm located in Petaluma, California, for about US$7 billion.
It was the most expensive acquirement made nearby Cisco to boy, and simply the
possessions of Well-controlled Atlanta has been larger. Dissimilar acquired companies
be undergoing grown into $1Bn+ responsibility units for the purpose Cisco, including LAN switching,
Adventurousness Utter over Internet Usage (VOIP), and accommodations networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In recent Parade 2000, at the crest of the dot-com boom, Cisco guide was the most
valuable company in the the world at large, with a peddle capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a exchange exceed of down US$108.03 billion,
it is restful one of the most valuable companies.

The comrades was a 2002-03 legatee of the Ron Brown Trophy, a U.S.
presidential honor to concede companies "an eye to the superior quality
of their relationships with employees and communities".