Cisco System

“Networks are all around us. They are in our walls, in the air. At schools, hotels, hospitals, even coffee shops. Always there, always on…This power exists today. In our routers. In our switches... . (Cisco, n.d.)

In 1995, John Chambers joined Cisco Systems as president and CEO. After six years under the supervision of Chambers, the company went from generating $2.2 billion in annual sales to $22.3 billion. As a result of the market downturn in 2001, the company suffered its first loss and laid off 18% of its workforce. Chambers quickly realized Cisco was in need of significant organizational restructuring if Cisco were to survive and thrive the downtown. This change shifted the company from a decentralized firm that only focused its three work silos of Marketing, Engineering and Sales to segregated and specific customer groups to a centralized firm that focused on collaboration and relevant technologies for given customer groups. This

Cisco is clearly the one of Information Age companies. Cisco gives the priority on the Information Technology. In the case study, Cisco adopted strategy of systematic acquisitions and strategic partners, which proof that Cisco focuses on cooperated information. Cisco also concerned about standardization, flexibility, extensibility, and scalability. The decisions that Solvik and his team made during this case trends to emphasize how more Cisco becomes closer to the definition of Information Age company. They applied internet and intranet which is not so popular at that year for employee self-service, communication and distance learning, customer

4.CEO John Chambers believed that “by providing the end-to-end network plumbing, we can change the way entire companies and industries operate.” How did Cisco’s IT web-enablement initiatives reinforce and demonstrate that belief? Explain your answer with examples.

It is argued that the explicit nature of this network strategy has enabled the rm concerned to invest time and resources in the development of speci c management expertise in inter- rm relationship building and project management.

2. Given the industries in which the Cisco competes, what are the implications for the major types of buying situations?

Cisco Systems, Inc. is an IT company that specializes in the selling of networking and communication products and services. It is a B2B company where they sell its products primarily to large enterprises and telecommunications service providers, but it also markets products designed for small businesses and consumers such as routers, modems, and home network management software. The products and services aim to transport data, voice and video communication within buildings and campuses as well as around the globe. The services include routing, switching, home networking internet protocol telephony, optical networking, security,

Mapping of network infrastructure – to understand the network devices that applications and hardware depend on for secure performance.

Cisco System becomes a $12 billion high-technology company with over 47,000 employees in not less than 54 countries of the world due to its strategic management policies and practices among which is diverse

Cisco rapidly grew from a start-up to $500M global corporation by January, 1993 when the case begins with Pete Solvick, CIO of the company faced with the daunting task of upgrading its transaction systems and data warehouse. Cisco had exponential growth through the 1990s, averaging at one point an 80% compound annual growth rate while also accelerating new product development and introductions throughout its direct and indirect sales channels. Systems outages were becoming more common as were product shortcomings due to the IT systems supporting key processes becoming faulty and only partially operating the majority of the time. Clearly Cisco had outgrown its current transaction processes and data warehousing infrastructure.

Huawei also pitched the fact that any Cisco-trained engineer could operate the Quidway router with ease. Cisco’s rise to the leadership in networking equipment and technology was the result of many years of diligent, hard work and creativity. Cisco holds several patents, copyrights, and trade secrets that are critical to its success. Huawei, on the other hand, chose to make shortcuts and had complete disregard for the sanctity and legality of intellectual property. In fact, Huawei’s Vice President confessed that “all the world’s leading equipment suppliers are our learning modules.”[1] Can Huawei’s belief in “learning” from their competitors and Cisco’s belief that Huawei stole and copied intellectual property be attributed to a differing ethical perspective due to culture? We will discuss this in Section 3.

Cisco Systems is a multinational corporation that designs, manufactures, and sells internet protocol (IP) based networking products and services related to the communication and information technology (IT) industry. The Company’s business is organized in three segments: the Americas; Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), and Asia Pacific, Japan and China (Reuters). Cisco Systems, Inc. is the world’s leading manufacturers of computer networking products and systems.

According to Chambers, Cisco CEO, the company is all about the network not a single relationship. Their ultimate goal is to be a comprehensive Internet solutions provider. In order to achieve this goal, Cisco expanded both products and markets through employment of acquisition strategies and associated management structure adjustments. These are elaborated in the following sections.

Cisco Systems is one of the fastest growing companies in the world, selling devices that connect computers to the Internet and to other networks. Cisco’s products are being replaced continuously, so extensive training of employees and customers is needed. Cisco recognizes that every member of its team, since the employees until

Page eight of the case begins to outline some of the challenges that the HP-Cisco alliance had already faced concerning the sale of joint products. For example, we learn that at HP, Cisco products did not count towards a sales representative’s quota and this resulted in a decline in sales of Cisco equipment by HP sales representatives. Further, if HP or Cisco sales staff had to master not only their parent company product line,