Cisco Case Analysis Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Cisco Case Analysis - Research Paper Example As per the 2010 company data, Cisco employed over 60,000 people and earned annual revenue of US$ 40 billion. Despite the adversities of 2009 global financial crisis, the company remains an attractive investment option for global investors. Networking industry comprises of a number of huge players like IBM. Therefore, the degree of competitive rivalry is very high in this sector. In addition, threat of substitutes is also high in networking industry since majority of the networking equipment is substitutable. However, the industry is less affected with the threat of new entrants because entry cost is huge in the networking sector. Evidently, supplier has less bargaining power over networking companies as there are a large number of potential suppliers. Although there are numerous potential suppliers, companies rarely opt to change their suppliers because of high switching cost. At the same time, buyer power is relatively high in the networking industry since modern customers are well informed of the prevailing market prices and increased provider options. Hence, the Porters’ five forces analysis indicates that the networking industry’s external environment does not offer potential opportunities to Cisco. The Cisco was founded in 1984 by two Stanford computer scientists, and the company was made public in 1990. As Nolan (2005) reports, from the beginning, the company concentrated to dominate the dramatically growing ‘internetworking’ market. In 1997, Cisco was included in the top five companies listed by Fortune 500 on the basis of return on revenues and return on assets. In the following year, the company’s market capitalization crossed $100 billion mark. The company overtook Microsoft in 2000. In the same year, some surveys reflected that Cisco products play a role in more than 75% of all internet traffic. Mission statement of Cisco is; â€Å"shape the future of the