Cisco

Cisco Systems Inc. is an international technology corporation founded in 1984 and based in San Jose California, USA. They deal with small consumer electronics such as routers and switches, large business-sized networking equipment, and services. Cisco's head office in San Jose employs 65,874 people as of the second quarter of 2010. This quarter (2010 Q2) brought in $9.8 billion revenue.

Cisco became a publicly traded company on February 16th, 1990, listed as CSCO on NASDAQ. At this time the company went public, stocks were worth just $0.06USD each. At the time of opening on March 24th 2010, stocks were valued at $26.51 each. As of June 8, 2009, Cisco was included in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Revenue is expected to reach over $36 Billion this year. http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/corpinfo/factsheet.html

The name Cisco comes from the last 5 letters of the American city San Francisco.

• Founded in 1984
• Added to the Dow Jones Industrial Average on June 8, 2009
• Listed on NASDAQ in 1990
• August 17, 2009 - Cisco drops hardware prices by 15.25% due to the recession

Cisco's products and services are arranged into three categories: "network systems", "collaboration, voice and video", and "data center".

Network Systems

This includes devices and services that allow an independent user, group, or business to connect their computing equipment together in order to share resources, data, and more. Some of the products in this category include routers, switches, wireless, security, optical networking, and network management. Services include routing and switching services, security services, and carrier ethernet services.

Collaboration, voice, and video

This includes devices and services that make it easier for the user(s) to work together either remotely or in close proximity, especially where transferring data in the form of voice or video. Products in this category include WebEx, service exchange, and universal gateways. Services include broadband cable services and TelePresence services.

Datacenter

This includes devices and services used for storing data. Products include unified computing, storage networking, and blade switches. Services include application management services. http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/index.html

• Alcatel-Lucent
• Hewlett-Packard Company
• Juniper Networks, Inc