According to the CEO Refresher online, Cisco was founded in 1984 by a small group of computer scientists from Stanford University. Since the company's inception, Cisco engineers have been prominent in the development of Internet Protocol (IP) based networking technologies. This tradition of IP innovation continues with industry-leading products in the core areas of routing and switching. The company also has product offerings in areas such as optical, network security, IP telephony, wireless LAN, storage networking, and home networking. For the last fifteen years, Cisco has been the largest provider of routers. Routers are essentially the servers that move traffic over the Internet. In addition to its products, Cisco provides a broad range of service offerings, including technical support services and advanced services. Cisco sells its products and services, both directly through its own sales force and indirectly through channel partners to large enterprises, commercial businesses, service providers, and consumers (Nolan, 2000).
According to the article: "Cisco Systems: A Digital Firm in the Making," Cisco is one of the key players in providing the infrastructure for the Internet. It is the worldwide leader in networking for the Internet. Cisco views its supply chain capabilities as core to its brand and customer-experience strategy. Cisco believes that taking orders is only one part of serving customer needs. Cisco senior management believes that businesses must fulfill the promise they make to customers by delivering products and information on request. One of the main objectives of Cisco's business strategy is to use the Internal combined with advanced supply chain management tools as a source of competitive advantage.
Cisco is the worldwide leader in networking for the Internet. Cisco hardware, software, and services are used to create Internet solutions so that individuals, companies, and countries have easy access to in...