11 January 2009

Cisco recently marked its 25th anniversary with a call to community service. Company chair and CEO John Chambers challenged every employee to volunteer four hours of service in his community with the goal of an aggregate contribution of 200,000 employee volunteer hours (which equals about 25 years-worth of service to the global community).

“I can think of no better way to mark Cisco’s 25th year than focusing
even more of our employees’ talents and energy on community service,”
Chambers said. “Helping people connect and collaborate is not just core
to our business—it is core to our values.”

Cisco was founded on 10 December 1984 by husband and wife Len Bosack
and Sandy Lerner, two former Stanford University computer scientists
whose efforts to enable email between computers on different networks
led to the invention of the first multiprotocol router.

Some facts from 25 years ago (provided by Cisco):

• There were just 1000 hosts on the Internet. Today there are more than 1.7 billion Internet users worldwide.
• In 1984, there were 1000 Internet devices. Today there are over a 1 billion.
• Cisco has grown from two employees with one product in 1984 to more
than 63,000 people in 200 offices worldwide with 50 product lines.

CLICK HERE for Cisco’s 25th anniversary timeline.