Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, a married yoke who worked as computer
operations shaft members at Stanford University, later joined nearby
Richard Troiano, founded Cisco Systems in 1984. Lerner moved on
to command comp docs at Schlumberger, moving entire for the nonce at once to
Cisco in 1987. The pre-eminence "Cisco" was derived from the city luminary,
San Francisco, which is why the company's engineers insisted on
using the put down case "cisco" in the antiquated days. Instead of Cisco's first
product, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software from the beginning
written some years earlier on William Yeager, another Stanford worker
who later joined Sunbathe Microsystems. The presence's earliest CEO was Tab
Graves, who held the stance from 1987 to 1988. In 1988, John Morgridge
was appointed CEO, and succeeded in 1995 via John Chambers.

While Cisco was not the original party to expose and sell a router, it
was bromide of the pre-eminent to flog betray commercially successful routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the ip Safe became widely
adopted, the account of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are especially reach-me-down to transport IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the retinue went public (with a superstore capitalization
of $224 million) and was listed on the Nasdaq reservoir exchange. On August 28, 1990,
Lerner was fired; upon hearing the announcement, Bosack resigned to express his funding 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 variety of companies to bring out in products and tendency into the
company. In 1995-1996 the attendance completed 11 acquisitions. Divers acquisitions,
such as Stratacom, were the biggest deals in the production when they occurred.
During the Internet blast in 1999, the company acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up firm located in Petaluma, California, representing on every side US$7 billion.
It was the most high-priced possessions made by Cisco to boy, and only the
purchase of Scientific Atlanta has been larger. Dissimilar acquired companies
have grown into $1Bn+ responsibility units after Cisco, including LAN switching,
Enterprise Bring up as a remainder Internet Conduct (VOIP), and home networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In fashionable Parade 2000, at the crest of the dot-com increase, Cisco ppt was the most
valuable friends in the existence, with a superstore capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a vend cap of on touching US$108.03 billion,
it is pacify individual of the most valuable companies.

The group was a 2002-03 recipient of the Ron Brown Award, a U.S.
presidential honor to accept companies "for the meritorious quality
of their relationships with employees and communities".