Cisco beats estimates with 2Q earnings

While Cisco was not the first company to develop and sell a router, it was one of the first to sell commercially successful routers supporting multiple network protocols. As the Internet Protocol became widely adopted, the importance of multi-protocol routing declined. Today, Cisco's largest routers are primarily used to deliver IP packets.

Variety of companies to bring in products

Cisco acquired a variety of companies to bring in products and talent into the company. In 1995-1996 the company completed 11 acquisitions. Several acquisitions, just as Stratacom, were the biggest deals in the industry when they occurred. While the Internet boom in 1999, the company acquired Cerent Corporation, a start-up company located in Petaluma, California, for about US$7 billion. It was the most expensive acquisition made by Cisco to date, and only the acquisition of Scientific Atlanta has been larger. Several acquired companies have grown into $1Bn+ business units for Cisco, including LAN switching, Enterprise Voice over Internet Protocol, and home networking. Cisco acquired Linksys in 2003.

In 2010, Cisco bought Starent Networks, a mobile research company and Moto Development Group, a product design consulting firm that helped develop Cisco's Flip video camera. As well in 2010, Cisco was a key stakeholder in e-Skills Week.

In March 2011, Cisco completed the acquisition of privately held network configuration and change management solutions company Pari Networks.

Products and servicesCisco's current portfolio of products and services is focused upon three market segments - Enterprise and Service Provider, Small Business and the Home. The solutions for each market are segmented into Architectures, which form the basis for how Cisco approaches each market.

ArchitecturesIn an effort to allow their sales team to have more business-focused conversations with clients, as opposed to focussing on discussions around products, Cisco announced a new focus around six 'Architectures' in 2009. These are:

:* Borderless Networks:* Collaboration:* Data Center and Virtualization:* IP NGN:* Small Business:* ConsumerUnder these architectures, Cisco intends to by degree knit at the same time its various products, and introduce new products and features in order to provide a complete set of capabilities in each area.

Major provider of Voice over IP to enterprises

VoIP services Cisco became a major provider of Voice over IP to enterprises, and is now moving into the home user market through its acquisitions of Scientific Atlanta and Linksys. Scientific Atlanta provides VoIP equipment to cable service providers just as Time Warner, Cablevision, Rogers Communications, UPC, and others; Linksys has partnered with companies just as Skype and Yahoo to integrate consumer VoIP services with wireless and cordless phones.

Hosted Collaboration Solution Cisco partners can now offer cloud-based services based on Cisco's virtualized Unified Computing System. A part of the Cisco Unified Services Delivery Solution, it will include hosted versions of Cisco Unified Communications Manager, Cisco Unified Contact Center, Cisco Unified Mobility, Cisco Unified Presence, Cisco Unity Connection, and Cisco Webex Meeting Center.

Network Emergency Response The company maintains several Network Emergency Response Vehicless which are staffed by Cisco employees while natural disasters and other public crises. The vehicles are self contained and provide wired and wireless services including voice and radio interoperability, voice over IP, network based video surveillance and secured high definition video conferencing for leaders and first responders in crisis areas with up to 5 Mbps of bandwidth via a 1.8-meter satellite antenna. NERVs are as a rule stored at Cisco facilities in San Jose, California and Technology Triangle Park, North Carolina for strategic deployment in North America and are capable of being fully operational within 15 minutes of arrival, running for 72 hours indiscriminately. The NERV has been deployed to incidents just as the October 2007 California wildfires; hurricanes Gustav, Ike, and Katrina; the 2010 San Bruno gas pipeline explosion; and tornado outbreaks in North Carolina and Alabama in 2011. In 2011, Cisco received the Research Preparedness award from the American Red Cross, Silicon Valley Chapter for it's development and use of these vehicles in disasters.

Cisco Systems as well sponsors a line of IT Professional certifications for Cisco products. There are five levels of certification: Entry, Associate, Professional, Expert, and recently Architect, as so then as eight different paths, Routing & Switching, Design, Network Security, Service Provider, the newly introduced Service Provider Operations, Storage Networking, Voice, and Wireless.

Wired News had uncovered a leaked, confidential Cisco powerpoint presentation that details the commercial opportunities of the Golden Shield Project of Internet control. In her article, journalist Sarah Stirland accuses Cisco of marketing its innovation "exactly as a tool of repression."

Antitrust lawsuit On December 1, 2008, Multiven filed an antitrust lawsuit against Cisco Systems, Inc. in an effort to open up the network maintenance services marketplace for Cisco equipment, promote competition and ensure consumer choice and value. Multiven's complaint alleges that Cisco harmed Multiven and consumers by bundling and tying bug fixes/patches and updates for its operating system software to its maintenance services and through a series of other illegal exclusionary and anticompetitive acts designed to maintain Cisco's alleged monopoly in the network maintenance services market for Cisco networking equipment. Cisco responded by accusing the person who filed the anti-trust suit, British born Peter Alfred-Adekeye, with hacking and pressured the US government to extradite him from Canada where he was giving evidence against Cisco in an anti-trust hearing. Canadian Judge Ronald McKinnon, who oversaw the extradition hearing, stated the real reason for the extradition proceedings was because Alfred-Adekeye "dared to take on a multinational giant." He as well condemned the US prosecutor for hiding the fact that Alfred-Adekeye was in legal proceedings against Cisco Systems, for stating that Alfred-Adekeye had left the USA in a time period when he had not and a formal request for extradition was not filed against Alfred-Adekeye when he was taken into custody. Judge McKinnon described the information provided by Cisco and the US prosecutor as "full of innuendo, half-truths and falsehoods" adding "This speaks volumes for Cisco's duplicity" and accused them of "unmitigated gall" in using such a heavy-handed move as an unsupportable arrest and jailing to pressure Alfred-Adekeye to drop or settle his civil antitrust complaint.

Category:Companies based in San Jose, CaliforniaCategory:Companies established in 1984Category:Deep packet inspectionCategory:Networking companies of the United StatesCategory:Networking hardware companiesCategory:Telecommunications equipment vendorsCategory:Videotelephony