In March 2014, Cisco Systems was sued for patent infringement. Spherix claims that more than $43 billion in Cisco revenue infringes Spherix`s old Nortel patents. Spherix officials say a wide range of Cisco products, from switches to routers, infringe 11 old Nortel patents that the company now owns. [195] On October 27, 2015, Cisco announced that it would acquire Lancope, a threat detection company, for $452.5 million in a cash and stock transaction. [118] In 1985, Bosack and Stanford employee Kirk Lougheed launched a project to formally network the Stanford campus. [15] They adapted Yeager`s software into what became the basis of Cisco IOS, despite Yeager`s claims that it had been denied permission to sell the Blue Box commercially. 11. In July 1986, Bosack and Lougheed were forced to resign from Stanford, and the university considered filing criminal charges against Cisco and its founders for stealing its software, hardware designs, and other intellectual property rights. [15] In 1987, Stanford licensed the router software and two computer cards to Cisco. [15] In addition to Bosack, Lerner, Lougheed, Greg Satz (a programmer) and Richard Troiano (who took over sales) completed the first Cisco team.

[15] The company`s first CEO was Bill Graves, who held this position from 1987 to 1988. [17] In 1988, John Morgridge was appointed CEO. [18] Cisco`s chief security officer has publicly responded to the allegations and denied working with any government to weaken Cisco products for operational purposes or implement security backdoors. [190] On the more traditional business side, Cisco continued to expand its routing, switching, and security portfolio. The growing importance of Ethernet has also influenced the company`s product lines. The limitations of IOS and the aging Crescendo architecture have also forced Cisco to consider standard silicon in the carrier Ethernet segment. This resulted in a new ASR 9000 product family designed to consolidate the company`s carrier Ethernet and subscriber management business around EZChip and IOS-XR-based hardware. [23] In 1985, Cisco sold its first product, a network card for Digital Equipment Corporation computers. Its first major success, a router that supports multiple network protocols, came the following year. Needing money to grow, the founders turned to a venture capital firm, Sequoia Capital.

Sequoia took effective control of the company in late 1987 and installed John Morgridge as President and CEO in 1988. He managed it skillfully, but did not get along with the founders. In 1990, shortly after Cisco sold its first shares to the public, Lerner was ousted from the company, and Bosack subsequently left. On February 16, 1990, Cisco Systems went public with a market capitalization of $224 million and was listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange. Lerner was released on August 28, 1990. When her husband Bosack heard the news, he resigned in protest. [20] Although Cisco was not the first company to develop and sell dedicated network nodes,[21] it was one of the first to sell commercially capable routers that supported multiple network protocols. [22] The traditional processor-based architecture of early Cisco devices, combined with the flexibility of the IOS operating system, has kept pace with changing technology requirements through frequent software upgrades.

Some popular models of the time (such as Cisco 2500) managed to remain virtually unchanged in production for nearly a decade. The logo is intended to represent the two towers of the Golden Gate Bridge. [19] In 2019, Cisco acquired CloudCherry, a customer experience management company, and Voicea, an artificial intelligence company. [63] [64] [65] In April 2014, Cisco announced funding for early-stage companies to focus on the Internet of Things. The investment fund was provided for investments in IoT accelerators and startups such as The Alchemist Accelerator, Ayla Networks and EVRYTHNG. [45] Later that year, the company announced plans to lay off an additional 6,000 workers, or 8% of its global workforce, as part of a second restructuring. [46] On November 4, 2014, Cisco announced an investment in Stratoscale. [47] Cisco celebrated its 20th anniversary as a public company this week. And what an adventure it was for Cisco shareholders. For example, the average Cisco employee experienced inventory growth of more than $250,000 in 1999. In addition, Cisco made it the most valuable company in the world with a market capitalization of $569 billion on March 27, 2000.

Let`s take a little trip back in time. 1990 170 West Tasman DriveSan Jose, CA 95134-1706USA408 526 4000www.cisco.com Cisco and the Cisco logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cisco and/or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. For a list of Cisco trademarks, see www.cisco.com/go/trademarks. Third party trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. The use of the word partner does not imply a partnership relationship between Cisco and any other company. In January 2017, Cisco announced that it would acquire AppDynamics, a company that monitors application performance, for $3.7 billion. The acquisition took place just one day before AppDynamics` IPO. [122] Cisco was officially founded in California on December 10, 1984 and went public on February 16, 1990. NASDAQ NM: CSCO (common shares). Chuck Robbins is Cisco`s Chief Executive Officer with 73,711 employees in Q4 2016 and revenue of $12.6 billion at the end of fiscal 2016. In Nigeria, Olakunle Oloruntimehin is General Manager +/- 45 employees at Cisco Nigeria.