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 java services at Schlumberger, moving occupied in days of yore to
Cisco in 1987. The name "Cisco" was derived from the burg luminary,
San Francisco, which is why the company's engineers insisted on
using the cut lawsuit "cisco" in the early days. For Cisco's earliest
offshoot, Bosack adapted multiple-protocol router software originally
written some years earlier sooner than William Yeager, another Stanford worker
who later joined Brown Microsystems. The assemblage's foremost 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 beginning followers to evolve and sell a router, it
was bromide of the pre-eminent to sell commercially in the money routers supporting
multiple network protocols. As the ip Security became greatly
adopted, the importance of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's
largest routers are first of all used to deliver IP packets.

On February 16 1990, the group went societal (with a market capitalization
of $224 million) and was listed on the Nasdaq house exchange. On August 28, 1990,
Lerner was fired; upon hearing the announcement, Bosack resigned to conduct his shore up in search her.
Bosack and his partner 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 proclivity into the
company. In 1995-1996 the company completed 11 acquisitions. Various acquisitions,
such as Stratacom, were the biggest deals in the industry when they occurred.
During the Internet explosion in 1999, the corporation acquired Cerent Corporation,
a start-up assemblage located in Petaluma, California, representing around US$7 billion.
It was the most up-market possessions made at hand Cisco to latest, and simply the
acquisition of Well-controlled Atlanta has been larger. Several acquired companies
be undergoing grown into $1Bn+ business units in the service of Cisco, including LAN switching,
Eagerness Bring up over Internet Usage (VOIP), and dwelling-place networking. Cisco
acquired Linksys in 2003.

In fashionable Walk 2000, at the apex of the dot-com bang, Cisco ios was the most
valuable attendance in the crowd, with a market capitalization of more than
US$500 billion. In July 2009, with a vend cap of hither US$108.03 billion,
it is unmoving individual of the most valuable companies.

The group was a 2002-03 receiver of the Ron Brown Prize, a U.S.
presidential honor to concede companies "in search the meritorious property
of their relationships with employees and communities".