Cisco Systems Architecture:

Case Postscript

Ken Peffers UNLV September 2003

Mind-Stretching Case

• Designed to show what the current art of the possible is in IT use today for a major company.

Who is Cisco?

• Back office facilitator of the Internet– Dominant shares in categories of products in which

they compete handling 75% of all Internet traffic

• Young company– Founded 1984– All substantial growth subsequent to 1991– Original founders left before growth stage, selling all

of their shares

• Growth– 1993 $500 million– 2001 $20 billion

Core competencies

• Customer intimacy and order fulfillment

• Design

• Acquire capabilities

• Outsourced manufacturing

• Highly flexible infrastructure

• Set industry standards

Customer intimacy and order fulfillment

• No Internet sales in 1996• $17 billion in 2001 (92% of sales)• Order processing costs 60% less this way• Customers save 20%• Software upgrades: 90% over Internet• 80% of customer service requests handled

electronically• 65% of physical product sent directly from mfg to

customer in one shipment

Organizational Structure

• IT reports to Sr VP of Customer Advocacy

Internal Uses

• By Oct 2001 all internal applications web-enabled

• 18,000,000 pages on the Intranet

• Every employee has access to “My Yahoo” with inter-mixed internal data and external information

ERP project

• Selected partners based on quality– KGMP provided experienced team– KGMP sought best of breed software– Team spent 10 days writing RFP

• Built team from across the firm– Members who would be most missed in their current jobs

• Standards– 100% UNIX for servers– 100% Win NT for PCs– 100% Toshiba and HP PCs– 100% TCP/IP– Firms to be integrated into the firm held to these standards