SAN JOSE, Calif., November 15, 1994 -- Cisco Systems today announced at its annual shareholders meeting that John P. Morgridge, president and CEO, will become the company's chairman of the board. John Chambers, executive vice president of Cisco, will become president and CEO. Both moves will be effective at the end of January 1995.

John Morgridge joined Cisco in 1988 as president and CEO. During his six years of leadership, Morgridge has grown the company from $5 million to over $1.2 billion in annual sales and built Cisco into the global industry leader in internetworking. Cisco became a publicly held company in February 1990 and has reported nineteen consecutive quarters of revenue and earnings growth.

In his new position, Morgridge will continue to play a key role in Cisco and the future of internetworking by focusing his attention on education, customers, and government, while also serving as a key company spokesperson.

John Chambers joined Cisco in January 1991 after spending eight years at Wang Laboratories and six years with IBM. As executive vice president, he is responsible for research and development, manufacturing, worldwide sales, marketing, and support. As president and CEO he will add finance and administration to his responsibilities.

"John Chambers was brought into Cisco with the expectation that he would eventually run the company," said Morgridge. "Over the past four years his responsibilities have been steadily increased and during the last eighteen months John has been pivotal in the execution of the Cisco's decentralization plan and acquisition strategy, key components for the company's overall long-term growth.

"John has consistently shown his keen business sense and leadership ability," added Morgridge. "He has demonstrated that he will be very effective in continuing to take Cisco to the next stage in it's development."

Under the new structure, Donald T. Valentine, Cisco's current chairman of the board, will become vice chairman. Valentine has been a member of the board since 1987 when Sequoia Capital became the sole venture investor in Cisco Systems. Valentine was elected chairman of the board in 1988.

Cisco Systems, Inc., headquartered in San Jose, Calif., is the leading global supplier of internetworking products, including routers, bridges, workgroup systems, ATM switches, dial-up access servers, software routers and router management software. These products are used to build enterprise-wide internetworks linking an unlimited number of geographically dispersed LANs, WANs and IBM SNA networks. In the U.S., Cisco is traded over the counter under the NASDAQ symbol CSCO.