MENLO PARK, Calif., September 21, 1993 -- Cisco Systems, Inc. andCrescendo Communications, Inc. today jointly announcedthe signing of an agreement whereby Cisco will acquire Crescendo, aprivately held, high-performance networking company that provides workgroupsolutions to the desktop. Under terms of the agreement Cisco has agreedto acquire all of the outstanding stock and assume all the outstandingemployee stock options and warrants of Crescendo in exchange for 2,000,000shares of Cisco common stock. The closing sale price for Cisco's commonstock on NASDAQ on September 20, 1993 was $44.50 per share. Thetransaction, approved by the board of directors of both Cisco andCrescendo, is subject to several conditions including approval of Crescendoshareholders and receipt of an opinion that the transaction will beaccounted for as a pooling of interest. A meeting with the Crescendoshareholders has been scheduled for September 23, 1993 to vote on thetransaction.
"Cisco has long been committed to bringing leading technology to itscustomers to assure their continued success in building scalable networks. This acquisition represents an important continuation of our commitmentto high-speed switching solutions for the workgroup," said John Morgridge,president and CEO of Cisco. Crescendo products are based on a technologycalled Copper Distributed Data Interface (CDDI). CDDI provides 100megabits per second (Mbps) data over unshielded twisted pair (UTP) wiring toprovide as much as a tenfold increase in performance.
"Crescendo's key technologies are at the heart of a number ofleading-edge trends in our industry, including CDDI/FDDI, LAN switching,and ATM. Crescendo pioneered and developed its 'MLT3' signaling schemethat became the foundation for the 100-Mbps over UTP, today emerging as aworldwide industry standard. We are extremely pleased to join forces withthis innovative company which provides Cisco a logical extension of ourcapabilities in the high-performance workgroup arena," stated Morgridge.
"Crescendo's mission always has been to formulate and drivehigh-performance workgroup technologies to the desktop level, focusing onCDDI/FDDI, LAN switching, and ATM. This combination with Cisco willdeliver state-of-the-art solutions, leveraging industry standards andcommon cabling infrastructure, that address customer requirements forscalable bandwidth to the desktop," according to Mario Mazzola, cofounderof Crescendo.
Crescendo presently has approximately 60 employees and is based inSunnyvale, California with seven regional offices in the U.S. anddistributors in Europe and Asia. Crescendo is recognized as a leadingsupplier of CDDI and FDDI products. The company's award-winning productline 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 StandardsAchievement Award," and Data Communications' "1992 Hot Products Award."
