About Cisco Systems Inc

Cisco Systems, Inc. (Cisco) designs and sells a broad range of technologies that power the Internet. The company is integrating its product portfolios across networking, security, collaboration, applications and the cloud to create highly secure, intelligent platforms for the company’s customers’ digital businesses. These platforms are designed to help the company’s customers manage more users, devices and things connecting to their networks. This will enable the company to provide customers with a highly secure, intelligent platform for their digital business. The company conducts its business globally and manages its business by geography. The company’s business is organized into the following three geographic segments: Americas; Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA); and the Asia Pacific, Japan, and China (APJC). The company’s products and technologies are grouped into the following categories: Secure, Agile Networks; Internet for the Future; Collaboration; End-to-End Security; Optimized Application Experiences; and Other Products. In addition to the company’s product offerings, the company provides a broad range of service offerings, including technical support services and advanced services. Increasingly, the company is delivering its technologies through software and services. The company’s customers include businesses of all sizes, public institutions, governments, and service providers, including large webscale providers. These customers often look to the company as a strategic partner to help them use information technology (IT) to differentiate themselves and drive positive business outcomes. Strategy and Priorities The company’s customers are navigating change at an unprecedented pace. In this dynamic environment, their priorities are to transform infrastructure, secure the enterprise, power hybrid work, reimagine applications, and drive toward sustainability. The company’s strategy is to securely connect everything. The company is committed to driving a trusted customer experience, through the company’s innovation, solutions, choice, and people. Customer Priorities Transform Infrastructure The company’s strategy to help its customers transform their infrastructure with the network at the core began with Software-Defined Access (SD-Access) technology, one of the company’s leading enterprise architectures, and continued with the launch of the company’s Catalyst 9000 series of switches. The company has continued to transform its enterprise access portfolio by bringing together several technologies to form the only integrated architecture with built-in simplicity, automation and security at the foundation. This architecture is designed to enable the company’s customers to securely connect their users and devices to applications and data over any network, no matter where they are. The company has introduced several innovations that extend its networking capabilities to wireless and enterprise routing products, including Software-Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) and Internet of Things (IoT) edge platforms. The company’s SD-WAN solutions are designed to provide direct branch to cloud connectivity, enabling the workforce to access their software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications and workloads in an optimized and highly secure manner. The company has continued to expand its SD-WAN offering, through the company’s Cloud OnRamp integrations with several webscale providers to deliver predictable and highly secure application experiences. To further the company’s innovation in this area, the company is applying the latest technologies, such as machine learning and advanced analytics, to operate and enhance network capabilities. These network product offerings are designed to help enable customers to detect cybersecurity threats, even in encrypted traffic. As such, the company has created, in its view, the only network that is designed for security while also helping to maintain privacy. The company’s customers are operating in multicloud environments with private, public and hybrid clouds. For the data center, the company’s strategy is to deliver multicloud architectures that bring policy and operational consistency, regardless of where applications or data reside, by extending the company’s Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) and the company’s hyperconverged offerings. The company continues to invest in its data center portfolio to help meet the growing demand for cloud-delivered technologies. The company’s Nexus Cloud platform is designed to help its customers deploy, manage, and operate their data center networks from the cloud. The company’s technology strategy for the Internet for the Future is aimed at addressing the broad adoption of multicloud and application environments. The company continues to make significant investments in the development of software, silicon and optics — which are the building blocks for the Internet for the Future. The company introduced Cisco Silicon One, a single unified silicon architecture, as well as the Cisco 8000 carrier-class router family built on Cisco Silicon One and the company’s operating system, Cisco IOS XR7. The company has also expanded its Cisco Silicon One platform from a routing focused solution to one which addresses the webscale switching market. By combining the company’s routed optical networking solution integrating the company’s routers with pluggable optics, the company can further help deliver cost savings to the company’s customers. Secure the Enterprise The company’s security strategy is focused on delivering a simple and effective cyber-security architecture combining network, cloud and endpoint-based solutions that recognizes the critical importance of data privacy. The company is investing significant resources across the company’s security portfolio focused on cloud-based offerings, artificial intelligence-driven threat detection and end-to-end security architectures. The company unveiled the company’s strategic plan for a global, cloud-delivered, integrated platform that secures and connects organizations of any shape and size. Cisco Security Cloud is designed to be the most open, end-to-end, security platform across hybrid multi-cloud environments, while also minimizing the attack surface and automating security policies across an organization’s environment. This extends to the company’s secure access service edge (SASE) framework and Zero Trust architecture, where the company has developed a cloud-delivered stack. The company is also delivering unified detection and response capabilities with Cisco Extended Detection and Response (XDR), a cloud-based solution, and introduced new innovations across firewall, multicloud and application security capabilities. To enable a more optimized hybrid work experience with simple access across any location, device, and application, the company has brought to market a security service edge (SSE) solution. Additionally, the company has announced generative AI capabilities as part of the company’s Security Cloud platform to simplify security operations and increase efficiency. Power Hybrid Work Customers are looking to the company to help improve how their people communicate, collaborate and to increase productivity. At Cisco, the company is focused on providing and delivering highly secure collaboration experiences to help the company’s customers create a secure hybrid work environment. The company’s collaboration portfolio, which includes its subscription-based Webex conferencing platform, with meetings, devices, calling and messaging, is at the center of the company’s customers’ strategy for enabling their teams to be more productive and secure. To help the company’s customers transform their workplaces, the company continues to invest to expand its capabilities by introducing new Webex Calling innovations in the Webex Suite to improve work flexibility, reliability, and quality. The company also launched new devices for hybrid work which the company is making interoperable with other vendors’ collaboration offerings to create a seamless user experience. Reimagine Applications The company is uniquely positioned to enable successful business outcomes for customers in hybrid and multicloud environments. In the company’s view, networks are increasingly critical to business success and the company’s customers will benefit from the insights and intelligence that the company is making accessible through the company’s highly differentiated platforms. The company is continuing its commitment to deliver full stack observability from the application to the infrastructure to give the company’s customers greater insights that enable faster, better decision making. The company is doing this by adding key elements to the company’s portfolio, such as: infrastructure optimization with Intersight, network monitoring with technology from ThousandEyes, application performance monitoring with AppDynamics, as well as the company’s security innovations. Journey to Sustainability The company’s strategy focuses on accelerating the transition to clean energy, evolving the company’s business from linear to circular, and investing in resilient ecosystems. The company is striving to reduce the company’s own environmental footprint, and to use the company’s technology and expertise to help the company’s customers and suppliers reduce theirs, contributing to a healthier and more resilient planet. Additionally, the company has set long-term goals to address the environmental impacts from the company’s products and business operations. The company strives to reduce the effects of the company’s operations and supply chain, help the company’s customers decrease greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and support the company’s communities experiencing direct effects of a changing climate by, among others: Continuing to invest in renewable energy, including investments in solar and wind energy; Designing the company’s products and packaging for reuse, repair, recycling, and resource efficiency and managing the company’s equipment for multiple lifecycles; Continuing to standardize visibility and insights across the company’s portfolio to enable customers to measure, monitor, and manage energy consumption; Investing in projects to improve the efficiency of the company’s offices, labs, and data centers worldwide; Working with the company’s component suppliers, manufacturing partners, and logistic providers to reduce emissions and set goals for absolute GHG emissions reductions; Helping the company’s employees to engage with events and opportunities to raise awareness and create a sense of community around sustainability; and Providing critical connectivity in the aftermath of natural disasters. Strategic Pillars To execute on the company’s strategy and address the company’s customer priorities, the company is focusing on the following six strategic pillars: Secure, Agile Networks — Build networking solutions with built-in simplicity, security, agility and automation that can be consumed as-a-service. Optimized Application Experiences — Enable greater speed, agility and scale of cloud-native applications. Hybrid Work — Deliver highly secure access, a safer workplace and collaboration experiences for the hybrid workforce. Internet for the Future — Transform connectivity by efficiently meeting the ever-growing demand for low-latency and higher speeds. End-to-End Security — Build simple, integrated, and high efficacy end-to-end security solutions, delivered on-premise or in the cloud. Capabilities at the Edge — Develop new capabilities for a distributed world while enhancing the developer experience and extending enterprise and carrier networks. The company is continuing to incorporate Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) across the company’s portfolio to enable further innovation and to empower the company’s customers to drive increased productivity and better user experiences. The company is investing in new opportunities in AI, launching new technologies across the company’s product portfolios designed to boost productivity, enhance policy management and simplify tasks. The company’s AI-scale infrastructure will allow the company’s customers to process AI workloads more efficiently. The company is also accelerating the company’s efforts to enable the delivery of network functionality as a service as the company’s customers increasingly want to consume technologies in flexible ways. The company made the initial step with its as-a-service portfolio, Cisco Plus, and the company’s first offer, Cisco Plus hybrid cloud, which combines the company’s data center compute, networking and storage portfolio. Cisco Plus includes the company’s plans to deliver networking-as-a-service, which is designed to unify networking, security and observability across access, wide area network (WAN), and cloud domains. Transforming the company’s Business Model The company is transforming the company’s offerings to meet the evolving needs of the company’s customers. Historically, the company’s various networking technology products have aligned with their respective product categories. However, increasingly the company’s offerings are crossing multiple product categories. As the company’s core networking offerings evolve, the company will add more common software features across the company’s core networking platforms. The company is increasing the amount of software offerings that the company provides and the proportion of subscription software offerings. The company has various software offerings that fall into the broad categories of subscription arrangements and perpetual licenses. The company’s subscription arrangements include term software licenses and associated service arrangements, as well as SaaS. As part of the transformation of the company’s business, the company continued to make strides to develop and sell more software and subscription-based offerings. The company is also focused on the entire customer lifecycle to drive expansion and renewals. The company will continue to invest in network-as-a-service offerings to provide the company’s customers with flexibility in how they want to consume the company’s technologies. Products and Services The company’s products and services are grouped into the following categories: Secure, Agile Networks Secure, Agile Networks consists of the company’s core networking technologies of switching, enterprise routing, wireless, and compute products. These technologies consist of both hardware and software offerings, including software licenses and SaaS, that help the company’s customers build networks, automate, orchestrate, integrate, and digitize data. It is critical for the company to continue to deliver continuous value to the company’s customers. The company continued to make progress in shifting more of its business to software and subscriptions across the company’s core networking portfolio, and in expanding the company’s software offerings. The company’s Switching portfolio encompasses campus switching, as well as data center switching offerings. The company’s campus switching offerings provide the foundation for converged data, voice, video, and IoT services. These switches offer enhanced security and reliability and are designed to scale efficiently as the company’s customers grow. Within campus switching are the company’s Catalyst 9000 series of switches that include hardware with embedded software, along with a software subscription referred to as Cisco DNA. Cisco DNA provides automation, analytics and security features and can be centrally monitored, managed, and configured. With the expansion of WiFi-6, the company has expanded its portfolio to include multi-gigabit technology in the company’s switches in order to manage higher bandwidth and manage network speed. The company’s data center switching offerings, led by the Nexus 9000 series, provide the foundation for mission critical data centers with high availability, scalability, and security across traditional data centers and private and public cloud data centers. The company continues to add greater visibility and analytics across its networks and applications, enabling the company to deliver better experiences for its customers. The company’s Enterprise Routing portfolio interconnects public and private wireline and mobile networks, delivering highly secure and reliable connectivity to campus, data center and branch networks for the company’s large to small enterprise and commercial customers. The company’s routing solutions are designed to meet the scale, reliability, and security needs of the company’s customers. The company’s Wireless portfolio provides indoor and outdoor wireless coverage designed for seamless roaming use of voice, video, and data applications. These products include wireless access points and controllers that are on-premise and cloud managed, and combined with the company’s Switching portfolio, delivers a converged access solution that is powerful, yet simple. The company’s Compute portfolio incorporates various technologies and solutions, including the Cisco Unified Computing System, HyperFlex, the company’s hyperconverged offering, and software management capabilities, which combine computing, networking, and storage infrastructure management and virtualization to deliver agility, simplicity, and scale. Internet for the Future The company’s Internet for the Future product category consists of the company’s routed optical networking, 5G, silicon and optics solutions. The company is focusing on transforming connectivity to the Internet and the cloud environment by efficiently meeting the growing demand for low-latency and higher speeds. The company’s routed optical networking systems, based on the company’s Silicon One and pluggable optic solutions, allow the company to transform the economics of building and operating networks for the company’s service provider customers, including the company’s webscale customers. The company’s Cisco 8000 series routers provide broad capacity in high-density designs, allowing the company’s customers to reduce operational footprints, lower carbon emissions, and evolve to more efficient network architectures. Collaboration The company’s Collaboration product category consists of the company’s Meetings, Collaboration Devices, Calling, Contact Center and Communication Platform as a Service (CPaaS) offerings. The company’s offerings within the Collaboration portfolio consist of software offerings, including perpetual licenses and subscription arrangements, as well as hardware. The company’s Collaboration strategy is to power hybrid work by reimagining employee and customer experiences to be more inclusive and engaging by providing technology that enables distributed teams to collaborate effortlessly. The company offers end-to-end collaboration solutions that can be delivered from the cloud, on-premise or within hybrid cloud environments allowing customers to transition their collaboration solutions from on-premise to the cloud. Artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities are embedded across the Webex portfolio, providing collaboration experiences that integrate people insights, relationship and audio intelligence to help improve productivity. The company’s CPaaS is a cloud communications platform that integrates communication channels and existing back-end business systems together to help enable the orchestration and automation of all customer and employee interactions. End-to-End Security The End-to-End Security product category consists of the company’s Cloud and Application Security, Industrial Security, Network Security, and User and Device Security offerings. Security continues to be a leading priority for the company’s customers, regardless of size or industry. The company continues to invest in resources across the company’s security portfolio focused on cloud-based offerings, AI-driven threat detection and end-to-end security architectures. Additionally, the company continues to invest in expanding its SASE architecture by delivering combined network and security functionality in a single cloud-native service. Optimized Application Experiences The Optimized Application Experiences product category consists of the company’s full stack observability and network assurance offerings. The company’s full stack observability offerings are designed to bring together and provide end-to-end visibility of the company’s customer’s environments across applications, networks, multi-cloud infrastructures and the Internet, to help deliver full stack observability for modern environments and drive relevant real-time insights. The company’s Intersight Infrastructure Services, a cloud-delivered SaaS offering, provides lifecycle operations management, automation, orchestration, and monitoring capabilities for customers’ infrastructure deployments from Data Center to the Edge. The company’s monitoring and analytics offering, AppDynamics, monitors performance across different application-related domains. The company’s network assurance offering, ThousandEyes, is a network intelligence platform that provides in-depth visibility into network and Internet performance. It enables organizations to see, understand, and improve every digital experience and assure seamless connectivity for their modern digital environments. Services In addition to the company’s product offerings, the company provides a broad range of service and support options for the company’s customers. The company’s overall service and support offerings are combined into one organization, Customer Experience, that is responsible for the end-to-end customer experience. The company’s support and maintenance services help the company’s customers ensure their products operate efficiently, remain available, and benefit from the most up-to-date system and application software. These services help customers protect their network investments, manage risk, and minimize downtime for systems running mission-critical applications. The company also provides comprehensive advisory services that are focused on responsive, preventive, and consultative support of the company’s technologies for specific networking needs. The company is investing in and expanding advisory services in the areas of software, cloud, security, and analytics, which reflects the company’s strategy of selling customer outcomes. The company is focused on three priorities: utilizing technology advisory services to drive higher product and services; assessment and migration services providing the tools, expertise and methodologies to enable the company’s customers to migrate to new technology platforms; and providing optimization services aligned with customers’ business expectations. Customers and Markets The company’s customers primarily operate in the following markets: enterprise, commercial, service provider, and public sector. Enterprise Enterprise businesses are large regional, national, or global organizations with multiple locations or branch offices. Many enterprise businesses have unique IT, collaboration, and networking needs within a multivendor environment. The company offers service and support packages, financing, and managed network services, primarily through the company’s service provider partners. The company sells these products through a network of third-party application and technology vendors and channel partners, as well as selling directly to these customers. Commercial The commercial market represents larger, or midmarket and small businesses. The company sells to its midmarket customers through a combination of the company’s direct sales force and channel partners. These customers typically require the latest advanced technologies that the company’s enterprise customers demand, but with less complexity. Small businesses require information technologies and communications products that are easy to configure, install, and maintain. The company sells to these smaller organizations within the commercial market primarily through channel partners. Service Providers Service providers offer data, voice, video, and mobile/wireless services to businesses, governments, utilities, and consumers worldwide. The service provider market includes regional, national, and international wireline carriers, webscale operators, as well as Internet, cable, and wireless providers. The company also includes media, broadcast, and content providers within the company’s service provider market, as the lines in the telecommunications industry continue to blur between traditional network-based, content-based and application-based services. Service providers use a variety of the company’s products and services for their own networks. In addition, many service providers use Cisco data center, virtualization, and collaboration technologies to offer managed or Internet-based services to their business customers. Public Sector The public sector market includes federal, state and local governments, as well as educational institution customers. Many public sector customers have unique IT, collaboration, and networking needs within a multi-vendor environment. The company sells to public sector customers through a network of third-party application and technology vendors, channel partners, as well as through direct sales. Sales Overview As of July 29, 2023 (fiscal 2023), the company’s worldwide sales and marketing functions consisted of approximately 26,000 employees, including managers, sales representatives, and technical support personnel. The company sells its products and services both directly and indirectly through a variety of channels with support from the company’s salesforce. A substantial portion of the company’s products and services is sold indirectly through channel partners, and the remainder is sold through direct sales. Channel partners include systems integrators, service providers, other third-party resellers, and distributors. Systems integrators and service providers typically sell directly to end users and often provide system installation, technical support, professional services, and other support services in addition to network equipment sales. Systems integrators also typically integrate the company’s products into an overall solution. Some service providers are also systems integrators. Distributors may hold inventory and sell to systems integrators, service providers, and other third-party resellers. The company refers to sales through distributors as the company’s two-tier system of sales to the end customer. The company’s service offerings complement the company’s products through a range of consulting, technical, project, quality, and software maintenance services, including 24-hour online and telephone support through technical assistance centers. Financing Arrangements The company provides financing arrangements for certain qualified customers to build, maintain, and upgrade their networks. The company’s financing arrangements include loans, leases (sales-type, direct financing and operating) and channels financing arrangements. Competition The company’s competitors include Amazon Web Services LLC; Arista Networks, Inc.; Broadcom Inc.; Ciena Corporation; CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc.; Datadog Inc.; Dell Technologies Inc.; Dynatrace Inc.; Fortinet, Inc.; Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Company; Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.; Juniper Networks, Inc.; Microsoft Corporation; New Relic, Inc.; Nokia Corporation; Nvidia Corporation; Palo Alto Networks, Inc.; RingCentral, Inc.; VMware, Inc.; Zoom Video Communications, Inc.; and Zscaler, Inc.; among others. History Cisco Systems, Inc. was founded in 1984. The company was incorporated in California in 1984.