MENLO PARK, Calif., September 21, 1993 -- Cisco Systems, Inc. and Crescendo Communications, Inc. today jointly announced the signing of an agreement whereby Cisco will acquire Crescendo, a privately held, high-performance networking company that provides workgroup solutions to the desktop. Under terms of the agreement Cisco has agreed to acquire all of the outstanding stock and assume all the outstanding employee stock options and warrants of Crescendo in exchange for 2,000,000 shares of Cisco common stock. The closing sale price for Cisco's common stock on NASDAQ on September 20, 1993 was $44.50 per share. The transaction, approved by the board of directors of both Cisco and Crescendo, is subject to several conditions including approval of Crescendo shareholders and receipt of an opinion that the transaction will be accounted for as a pooling of interest. A meeting with the Crescendo shareholders has been scheduled for September 23, 1993 to vote on the transaction.

"Cisco has long been committed to bringing leading technology to its customers to assure their continued success in building scalable networks. This acquisition represents an important continuation of our commitment to high-speed switching solutions for the workgroup," said John Morgridge, president and CEO of Cisco. Crescendo products are based on a technology called Copper Distributed Data Interface (CDDI). CDDI provides 100 megabits per second (Mbps) data over unshielded twisted pair (UTP) wiring to provide as much as a tenfold increase in performance.

"Crescendo's key technologies are at the heart of a number of leading-edge trends in our industry, including CDDI/FDDI, LAN switching, and ATM. Crescendo pioneered and developed its 'MLT3' signaling scheme that became the foundation for the 100-Mbps over UTP, today emerging as a worldwide industry standard. We are extremely pleased to join forces with this innovative company which provides Cisco a logical extension of our capabilities in the high-performance workgroup arena," stated Morgridge.

"Crescendo's mission always has been to formulate and drive high-performance workgroup technologies to the desktop level, focusing on CDDI/FDDI, LAN switching, and ATM. This combination with Cisco will deliver state-of-the-art solutions, leveraging industry standards and common cabling infrastructure, that address customer requirements for scalable bandwidth to the desktop," according to Mario Mazzola, cofounder of Crescendo.

Crescendo presently has approximately 60 employees and is based in Sunnyvale, California with seven regional offices in the U.S. and distributors in Europe and Asia. Crescendo is recognized as a leading supplier of CDDI and FDDI products. The company's award-winning product line includes a complete suite of 100 Mbps stackable workgroup hubs, adapters, and network management for high speed desktop computing. Crescendo has received a number of key awards, including LAN Magazine's "1993 Product of the Year Award," LAN Computing's "1992 Standards Achievement Award," and Data Communications' "1992 Hot Products Award."