Cisco The Acquisitions Company

The Company was founded in 1984 by two married couple named Leonard Bosack and Sandra Lener who used to work as computer operations staff members at Standford University Along with Richard Troiano and Named the company as cisco systems which is derived from San Francisco. The first product Cisco ever produced was a Multi-Protocol Router software that have been written by Len & Sandy Co-worker Wiliam Yeager years ago. on 1990 Cisco System went public and get listed in the NASDAQ; Same year later Len and Sandy Walked away from Cisco with $170 million.

Cisco developed one of the most commercially successful routers supporting multiple network protocols. CPU-based architecture of early Cisco devices coupled with flexibility of operating system IOS allowed for keeping up with evolving technology needs by means of frequent software upgrades in 1987 sales were $1.5 million, and the company had only eight employees at that time. Between 1992-1994 Cisco Acquired several companies in Ethernet switching, most notably Kalpana, Grand Junction and Crescendo Communications which together formed the Cisco Catalyst Product line.

Starting from that date Cisco started to be on of the most important companies that produce switching and routing products and continued to acquire other companies (Most Companies located in US) to expand its portfolio and services and to get talented People in.In 2006 the name of the company was officially shortened from Cisco Systems to simply Cisco. Starting from 1993 till date Cisco has acquired more than 140 Companies in 1999 it self company acquired 17 businesses, Major Acquisitions were as below:

1- 1992-1994 Kalpana, Grand Junction and Crescendo Communications – Catalyst Switches.

2- 1998 Selsius Systems – CUCM.

3- 1999 Aironet Wireless Communications – WLAN.

4- 2003 Linksys – Small to Medium Business.

5- 2007 WebEx – Web Conferencing

6- 2010 Tandberg – Video Conferencing

All these Acquisitions offered Cisco new products, Services, Market share that Cisco was not participating in.

Cisco and telephone

during 1990s Cisco acquired more than a company that had been working closely with Voice over IP protocol leading to its first VoIP product called Internet Telephone System (ITS) which was an IOS based soft PBX that run on top of Cisco routers (1800 Series, 2800 series, etc..) but this product was mainly targeting SMB, it was now the time for Selsius System acquisition in 1998 for Call Manager which started as Video conferencing product and later transition to be soft PBX, Cisco Developed both products and changed the ITS name to call manager express and lately Cisco changed both product names (CME became CUCME, CCM became CUCM) adding Cisco Unified in front of each product name.?

Cisco Education

Cisco has put a lot of efforts on product marketing and customer education and developed the most stable and desired certification in IT field , Cisco Career Certification now have five different levels Entry, Associate, Professional, Expert and Architect for Eight different Paths which include Routing & Switching, Voice, Security, Wireless, Design, Storage Networking, Service Provider, and Service Provider Operations.?

Back to the Competition

I have nothing against Cisco, in fact when I graduated from University as Communication Engineer and although I know a little about Networking I knew that there is a company called Cisco, I love the company, their marketing and education strategies. The company is very strong with good vision and wise acquisitions but it’s not a company of innovation as we have seen with Avaya. they Just buy a company with their products and Talents and then only direct the development of that product and they mainly work on Marketing and Education. and this is not enough to compete against Avaya; At least in IP Telephone Market?