Cisco Systems, Inc.
International Business Case Study
Executive Summary
Cisco Systems is a global market leader and innovator of computer communications and networking solutions. Established in the 1980’s, the company rapidly developed into the world’s greatest manufacturer of internet routers and was/is a foremost provider of commercial communication network devices. The aim of this case study report is to create an understanding of Cisco’s historical international business activities as well as explore their recent and current developments in international business management. The ‘Recent Development’ section details both Cisco’s main strategy of Acquisitions and how the company has operated under and coped with new management.
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Recent development of Cisco’s international business
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. Acquisitions
The impact of the global financial crisis in 2008 on Cisco, compared to the one in 2001, is nothing remarkable, if we only analyse the figures. The income of 2009, 36.1 billion dollars, was 9 % less than last year’s. More important, under the global financial crisis with a lot of ongoing uncertainty, the cash flow still increased by 25%, up to $35 billion, which makes sure the continuous acquisition strategy to carry on. Under the spread of the 2008 crisis, Cisco will continue to push forward the organization strategy - acquisitions, established in 2001. According to the statistics of the research done by Venture Resource Institutions, Cisco took over 48 enterprises
The reason 2013 intangible assets make up more of the total assets compared to 2013 intangible assets is due to the NDS acquisition that occurred in 2013
The product of the company is not having a broad scope to compete in the market. With companies like CISCO having broader products, its very difficult to compete in the market. So the company needs to create a more viable business model and upgrade the products.The technical solution of the
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) What advice would you offer John Chambers in managing Cisco’s culture through the transition?
In 1993, when Peter Solvik took over as CIO of Cisco, he reallocated the IT budget to each individual department. He also took the power away from an IT steering committee and gave it to departments. This gave each department the ability to function independent of each other. There was no need for them to communicate with other departments in order to achieve similar objectives and goals.
1. Study the networked supply chain concept as implemented by Cisco. What are its strengths and weaknesses?
1. Cisco suffered from inertia when an attempt was made to engage business management in selecting software for their individual areas, and/or agreeing to participate in the ERP implementation project. List and explain reasons why management would hesitate to become engaged in the IT process/project.
a. How was the Hoosier Burger project identified and selected? What focus will the new system have?
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.
As Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Cisco Systems Incorporated, the leadership of John Thomas Chambers solidified Cisco as the world’s premiere data networking company.
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.
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,
Network security has changed significantly over the past years. There is more and more data to monitor and analyze in order to detect the activity of your data and systems. Securing a network has many variables. Password authentication, network access, patches, anti-virus protection, intrusion detection, firewall and network monitoring tools are just a few of the things you can do to protect yourself.
In 2006, President George W. Bush solicited the help of US Businesses to help with the rebuilding of Lebanon after the war and the Partnership for Lebanon was formed to consolidate efforts (Jamali, 2011). The multi-national partnership was an effort to aid the people of Lebanon in rebuilding their quality of life by, “expanding the reach of education and workforce training, creating jobs, building out the country’s technology infrastructure, and connecting communities and government” (Cisco, 2007). Salam Yamout from Cisco was appointed as the project manager for the PFL, placing Cisco at the head of
In this report, we analysed and evaluate the project management of the case: The case, The PCNet Project (A): Project Risk Management in an IT integration Project. We had look into the project definition phase of the PCNet project and discuss some of the problems that emerged during the project in relation to project definition phase. We also evaluated the role of the PCNet project manager and discussed some of the core skillsets demanded by the job role. The risk management aspect of the PCNet project was also studied in our report. Lastly we made recommendations to address the dilemma faced by Jack Muller, the project manager for the PCNet project.