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The story
Founded by Leonard Bosack and Sandra Lerner in 1984, in San Francisco.1
1984–1995
Cisco Systems was founded in December 1984 by Sandy Lerner, along with her husband Leonard Bosack. Lerner was the director of computer facilities for the Stanford University Graduate School of Business. Bosack was in charge of the Stanford University computer science department's computers.
Cisco's initial product has roots in Stanford University's campus technology. In the early 1980s, students and staff at Stanford, including Bosack, used technology on the campus to link all of the school's computer systems to talk to one another, creating a box that functioned as a multi-protocol router called the "Blue Box". The Blue Box used circuitry made by Andy Bechtolsheim, and software that was originally written at Stanford by research engineer William Yeager. Due to the underlying architecture, and its ability to scale well, Yeager's well-designed invention became a key to Cisco's early success.
In 1985, Bosack and Stanford employee Kirk Lougheed began a project to formally network Stanford's campus. They adapted Yeager's software into what became the foundation for Cisco IOS, despite Yeager's claims that he had been denied permission to sell the Blue Box commercially. On July 11, 1986, Bosack and Lougheed were forced to resign from Stanford and the university contemplated filing criminal complaints against Cisco and its founders for the theft of its software, hardware designs, and other intellectual properties. In 1987, Stanford licensed the router software and two computer boards to Cisco. In addition to Bosack, Lerner, Lougheed, Greg Satz (a programmer), and Richard Troiano (who handled sales), completed the early Cisco team. The company's first CEO was Bill Graves, who held the position from 1987 to 1988. In 1988, John Morgridge was appointed CEO.
The name "Cisco" was derived from the city name San Francisco, which is why the company's engineers insisted on using the lower case "cisco" in its early years. The logo is a stylized depiction of the two towers of the Golden Gate Bridge.
On February 16, 1990, Cisco Systems went public with a market capitalization of $224 million, and was listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange. On August 28, 1990, Lerner was fired. Upon hearing the news, her husband Bosack resigned in protest.
Although Cisco was not the first company to develop and sell dedicated network nodes, it was one of the first to sell commercially successful routers supporting multiple network protocols. Classical, 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. Some popular models of that time (such as Cisco 2500) managed to stay in production for almost a decade virtually unchanged. The company was quick to capture the emerging service provider environment, entering the SP market with product lines such as Cisco 7000 and Cisco 8500.
Between 1992 and 1994, Cisco acquired several companies in Ethernet switching, such as Kalpana, Grand Junction and most notably, Mario Mazzola's Crescendo Communications, which together formed the Catalyst business unit. At the time, the company envisioned layer 3 routing and layer 2 (Ethernet, Token Ring) switching as complementary functions of different intelligence and architecture—the former was slow and complex, the latter was fast but simple. This philosophy dominated the company's product lines throughout the 1990s.
In 1995, John Morgridge was succeeded by John T. Chambers.
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1996–2005: Internet and silicon intelligence
The Internet Protocol (IP) became widely adopted in the mid-to-late 1990s. Cisco introduced products ranging from modem access shelves (AS5200) to core GSR routers, making them a major player in the market. In late March 2000, at the height of the dot-com bubble, Cisco became the most valuable company in the world, with a market capitalization of more than $500 billion, before the loss of $431 billion when the bubble burst.
The perceived complexity of programming routing functions in silicon led to the formation of several startups determined to find new ways to process IP and MPLS packets entirely in hardware and blur boundaries between routing and switching. One of them, Juniper Networks, shipped its first product in 1999 and by 2000 chipped away about 30% from Cisco SP Market share. In response, Cisco later developed homegrown ASICs and fast processing cards for GSR routers and Catalyst 6500 switches. In 2004, Cisco also started the migration to new high-end hardware CRS-1 and software architecture IOS XR.
2006–2012: The Human Network
As part of a rebranding campaign in 2006, Cisco Systems adopted the shortened name "Cisco" and created "The Human Network" advertising campaign. These efforts were meant to make Cisco a "household" brand—a strategy designed to support the low-end Linksys products and future consumer products.
On the more traditional business side, Cisco continued to develop its routing, switching and security portfolio. The quickly growing importance of Ethernet also influenced the company's product lines. Limits of IOS and aging Crescendo architecture also forced Cisco to look at merchant silicon in the carrier Ethernet segment. This resulted in a new ASR 9000 product family intended to consolidate the company's carrier Ethernet and subscriber management business around EZChip-based hardware and IOS-XR.
In March 2007, Cisco acquired Reactivity Inc, a privately held XML gateway provider based in Redwood City, California. Cisco placed the Reactivity team and product portfolio under its Datacenter Switching and Security Technology Group, which reported to the company's then senior vice president Jayshree Ullal.
Throughout the mid-2000s, Cisco also built a significant presence in India, establishing its Globalization Centre East in Bangalore for $1 billion. Cisco also expanded into new markets by acquisition, including its 2009 purchase of mobile specialist Starent Networks for $2.9 billion.
Cisco continued to be challenged by both domestic competitors Alcatel-Lucent, Juniper Networks, and an overseas competitor Huawei. Due to lower-than-expected profit in 2011, Cisco reduced annual expenses by $1 billion. The company cut around 3,000 employees with an early-retirement program who accepted a buyout and planned to eliminate as many as 10,000 jobs (around 14 percent of the 73,400 total employees before curtailment). During the 2011 analyst call, Cisco's CEO John Chambers called out several competitors by name, including Juniper and HP.
On July 24, 2012, Cisco received approval from the EU to acquire NDS (a TV software developer) for US$5 billion. In 2013, Cisco sold its Linksys home-router unit to Belkin International Inc., signaling a shift to sales to businesses rather than consumers.
2013–present
On July 23, 2013, Cisco Systems announced a definitive agreement to acquire Sourcefire for $2.7 billion. On August 14, 2013, Cisco Systems announced it would cut 4,000 jobs from its workforce, which was roughly 6%, starting in 2014. At the end of 2013, Cisco announced poor revenue due to depressed sales in emerging markets, caused by economic uncertainty and by fears of the National Security Agency planting backdoors in its products.
In April 2014, Cisco announced funding for early-stage firms to focus on the Internet of Things. The investment fund was allocated to investments in IoT accelerators and startups such as The Alchemist Accelerator, Ayla Networks and EVRYTHNG. Later that year, the company announced it was laying off another 6,000 workers or 8% of its global workforce, as part of a second restructuring. On November 4, 2014, Cisco announced an investment in Stratoscale.
In July 2014, it was again among the most valuable companies, with a market cap of about US$129 billion.
On May 4, 2015, Cisco announced CEO and Chairman John Chambers would step down as CEO on July 26, 2015, but remain chairman. Chuck Robbins, senior vice president of worldwide sales & operations and 17-year Cisco veteran, was announced as the next CEO. On July 23, 2015, Cisco announced the divestiture of its television set-top-box and cable modem business to Technicolor SA for $600 million, a division originally formed by Cisco's $6.9 billion purchase of Scientific Atlanta. The deal came as part of Cisco's gradual exit from the consumer market, and as part of an effort by Cisco's new leadership to focus on cloud-based products in enterprise segments. Cisco indicated that it would still collaborate with Technicolor on video products. On November 19, 2015, Cisco, alongside ARM Holdings, Dell, Intel, Microsoft and Princeton University, founded the OpenFog Consortium, to promote interests and development in fog computing.
In January 2016, Cisco invested in VeloCloud, a software-defined WAN (SD-WAN) start-up with a cloud offering for configuring and optimizing branch office networks. Cisco contributed to VeloCloud's $27 million Series C round, led by March Capital Partners.
In February 2017, Cisco launched a cloud-based secure internet gateway, called Cisco Umbrella, to provide safe internet access to users who do not use their corporate networks or VPNs to connect to remote data centers. Immediately after reporting its fourth-quarter earnings for 2017, Cisco's price-per-share value jumped by over 7%, while its earnings per share ratio increased from 60 to 61 cents per share, due in part to Cisco's outperformance of analyst expectations. In September 2017, Chambers announced that he would step down from the executive chairman role at the end of his term on the board in December 2017. On December 11, 2017, Robbins was elected to succeed Chambers as executive chairman while retaining his role as CEO, and Chambers was given the title of "Chairman Emeritus".
Reuters reported that "Cisco Systems Inc's (CSCO.O) product revenue in Russia grew 20 percent in 2017, ahead of Cisco's technology product revenue growth in the other so-called BRIC countries of Brazil, China and India." As of 2017, Cisco Systems shares were mainly held by institutional investors, including The Vanguard Group, BlackRock, and State Street Corporation.
On May 1, 2018, Cisco Systems agreed to buy AI-driven business intelligence startup Accompany for $270 million. As of June 2018, Cisco Systems ranked 444th on Forbes Global 2000 list, with $221.3 billion market cap.
In 2019, Cisco acquired CloudCherry, a customer experience management company, and Voicea, an artificial intelligence company.
In 2019, Cisco also introduced the "Silicon One" ASIC chip with the G100 model reaching a speed of 25.6 Tbit/s. The Silicon One competes against the Tomahawk series by Broadcom the Nvidia Spectrum, the Marvell Teralynx and the Intel Tofino. In 2023, the Silicon One G200 will offer a speed of 51.2 Tbit/sec.
In March 2020, SVP and GM of Enterprise Networking David Goeckeler left to become CEO of Western Digital. and was replaced by Todd Nightingale, head of Cisco Meraki. In August 2020, Cisco announced the creation of a new 130,000 square feet Midwest headquarters in Chicago at the Old Chicago Main Post Office accommodating 1,200 employees. Cisco maintains over 200 corporate offices in more than 80 countries.
In 2021, Cisco shares reached $46.25, remaining 42 percent below their 2000 peak.
In October 2022, Cisco announced a partnership adding the Microsoft Teams app to its meeting devices.
Cisco completely curtailed sales of its equipment in Russia after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, and completely discontinued service for already-sold devices. In April 2023, it became known that the company had destroyed equipment, spare parts, and even vehicles and office furniture worth 1.86 billion rubles (about $23 million) due to the impossibility of re-exporting. In February 2023, Cisco also wrote off the debt of the Russian mobile operator MTS in the amount of 1.234 billion rubles. As expected, these are unpaid amounts for previous equipment deliveries. In 2023, Cisco announced plans to begin manufacturing equipment in India.
On February 15, 2024, Cisco announced it would lay off more than 4,000 employees, or 5% of its global workforce, and lowered its annual revenue forecast due to economic challenges and reduced demand from telecom and cable service providers.
In March 2024, Cisco Systems received unconditional EU antitrust approval for its $28 billion bid for cybersecurity firm Splunk.
On April 24, 2024, Chuck Robbins, CEO of Cisco, met with Pope Francis and signed the Rome Call for AI ethics at the Vatican, endorsing the document's principles for responsible and ethical AI use.
On August 14, 2024, Cisco announced it would lay off another 7% of employees as part of an effort to consolidate its networking, security, and collaboration teams. At the same time, it announced $10.3 billion in profit for the fiscal year.
In October 2024 Cisco consolidated its corporate offices in the Bay Area and moved its main headquarters to the former Splunk office on the south side of Santana Row in San Jose.
On August 13, 2025, Cisco announced it would eliminate 221 positions across its Milpitas and San Francisco offices. At the same time, the company announced an 8% increase in revenue for the fiscal year.
As of June 24, 2026, Cisco's market cap was $471.91 billion.
In July 2026, Cisco was named Official Network Supplier of The R&A, providing networking infrastructure for major golf championships including The Open and the AIG Women's Open, as well as The R&A's new global headquarters in St Andrews.
In August 2026, Cisco reported record revenue of $63.3 billion for fiscal year 2026, an increase of 12% from the previous fiscal year. The company reported growing demand for its networking and artificial intelligence infrastructure, with $9.3 billion in AI-infrastructure orders during the fiscal year and approximately $4 billion in AI infrastructure revenue.
In late August 2026, Cisco announced an expansion of its Secure AI Factory with NIVIDIA through a partnership with Supermicro, adding high-density liquid and air-cooled AI computing systems to its portfolio. The expanded platform was designed for enterprise, neocloud, and sovereign-could customers and was expected to become available in October 2026.
Also in August 2026, Cisco launched its Sovereign Critical Infrastructure portfolio in Canada, supporting on-premises and air-gapped deployments for government, financial, healthcare, and other critical-infrastructure organizations.
From Wikipedia’s article on Cisco, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.8