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Published on 12/29/1999 All articles from this issue

Cisco makes Technology Fast 500 list fifth year in a row

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Town Crier Staff Report

Cisco Systems Inc., headquartered in San Jose, is one of nine companies that have the distinction of being a five-time consecutive winner on accounting firm Deloitte and Touche's Technology Fast 500 list. Cisco placed 460 on the list in 1999, with a five-year growth rate of 581 percent. According to the Fast 500 list, Cisco is the worldwide leader in networking for the Internet.

A group of computer scientists from Stanford University founded Cisco, with two employees and 1,000 host computers on the Internet in 1984. The company shipped its first product, the AGS router, in 1986. Six years after it was founded, Cisco made an initial public offering (IPO) in 1990, the same year the World Wide Web was launched, and Internet connections topped 100,000. That year Cisco had 254 employees and revenues of $69 million. One year later, revenues totaled $183 million.

In 1992, subsidiary Nihon Cisco opened in Japan, and Cisco introduced CiscoWorks management software. In the years since, the company opened subsidiaries in Hong Kong and Mexico, bought 40 other companies, and introduced products that were listed in catalogues the size of phone books. Charismatic John Chambers started work at Cisco in 1991, moving up to chief executive officer in 1995.

In 1997, Cisco was rated number four in the "BusinessWeek" Top 50 and made a first appearance in the "Fortune 500," at 332, only to move up the list to 253 in 1998. This year Cisco has 23,492 employees, with 10,406 in the Bay Area. Cisco products are sold in 115 countries, and fiscal revenues were $12.2 billion.

Cisco's hardware products are used to form networks or to give people access to those networks. Simply put, Cisco is the be-all, end-all for network services. The company supplies network software, design, installation, technical support, maintenance and management.

Cisco's customers range from telecommunication and cable providers, to large corporations with complex networks, to medium and small businesses in need of their first network. One major sales tool is custom software, on Cisco's Web site, that walks online customers through, and troubleshoots, complex orders.

The company philosophy is that Internet networking can change the way companies do business. Reading through Cisco's history, it would be difficult to believe otherwise.

For the complete picture, see: http://www.cisco.com/