Content area
Full Text
NEW YORK - When Silicon Valley in the form of Cisco Systems (San Jose, Calif.) and Paris personified by French telecom giant Alcatel toasted a new alliance at the posh Plaza Hotel in New York, Cisco showed it will continue to flex its considerable marketplace muscle. Since 1993, Cisco has acquired 16 companies at a cost of more than $5 billion, adding more than 2000 employees to the payroll and pushing sales up to $4.1 billion in 1996. The Cisco strategy is to dominate the data networking market, using as models IBM's once overpowering position in mainframes and the current dominance Intel and Microsoft have over PCs. To further this end, up to 12 acquisitions are planned for 1997. Two recent ones were Ardent Communications for its voice, video, and data integration technology at a cost of $156 million in stock, and Global Internet Software Group, a specialist in security systems for Windows NT Networks, for $40.325 million in cash.
In the short term, the Cisco/Alcatel...