Cisco Case Study

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In 1984, Cisco was founded by then husband and wife Leonard Bosack and Sandra Lerner. Bosack and Lerner worked together at Standford University; Bosack devised a way to connect the local area networks of his and his wife’s departments some 500 yards across campus (1). After being unable to sell their idea to existing computer companies, the couple decided to start their own company. The company’s primary product was the internetworking router, a hardware device programmed that automatically selected the most effect route for data to flow between networks. It was at this point that Cisco because the first company to commercially provide and multi-protocol router which could link together different kinds of networks all over the world. The initial market segment for Cisco was universities, research centers, and government facilities. In 1988 Cisco began to contact more mainstream corporations that had geographically separated office branches that used different networks, this gave them a head start in the late 80s when the commercial market of internetworking began to develop as they already were selling routers that worked with the many networking protocols that were in use. Even to this point, Cisco was still a young and emerging company, one which was short on capital. The husband and wife duo enlisted the help of a venture capitalist, Donald T. Valentine for support. For Valentine to invest in the company, both Lerner and Bosack had to surrender a controlling stake in the company. Thus, Valentine because chairperson and then hired John Morgride as the company’s new president and CEO. It’s during this timeframe that the founders had lost their control over the company. Bosack was given the title of Chief Scientist, and Lerner was made head of Customer Service. After only two short years of control under Valentine, Lerner was fired and out of protest her
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