St. Louis, Feb. 25, 2000 -- A definitive agreement has been announced by Cisco Systems, Inc to acquire a company formed two years ago by three computer scientists from Washington University in St. Louis. for Cisco common stock worth $355 million.
Cisco Systems, Inc., made the announcement to acquire Growth Networks Inc. on Feb. 16, 2000. With an office at suburban Brentwood, Mo, and headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., Growth Networks is recognized as having the patented technology and capable design team to become a market leader in components for Internet routers and multiservice switching systems, enabling faster and more efficient data communication.
The company is the brainchild of Jonathan S. Turner, Ph.D., Henry Edwin Sever Professor of Engineering, Jerome Cox, Sc.D., senior professor of computer science, and Guru Parulkar, Ph.D., professor of computer science, all from Washington University in St. Louis.
Work that the three Washington University computer scientists performed at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences Applied Research Laboratory (ARL), on the fifth floor of Bryan Hall, over the past decade served as the foundation and springboard of the company. All three men have directed the ARL at various times since its foundation in 1988. Turner currently directs ARL and is chief scientist for Growth Networks; Parulkar, chief technical officer and member of the board of directors for Growth Networks, is on leave of absence from the University; and Cox, now a senior professor, continues to direct two networking grants at Washington University, while devoting most of his time since his retirement from the regular faculty to Growth Networks as vice president of strategic planning and member of the board.
The company focuses on designing, developing and marketing of a new class of network communication products for the Wide Area Networking (WAN) market. Because the Internet and corporate networks are experiencing exponential growth there are many challenges facing service providers. There are predictions that the Internet could account for 90 percent of the world's bandwidth by 2003 and that traffic will increase by 8,000 fold over the next decade. This drives the demand for network scalability and growth along with the need for reliable, high capacity networks.
The Growth Networks technology and products are targeted at large Internet service providers, national service providers and carriers.
Cisco is acquiring Growth Networks to provide service providers with next-generation routing and switching infrastructures to enable them to deploy advanced systems with switching capacities that scale from tens of gigabits per second (Gbps) to tens of terabits per second (Tbps). A gigabit is one billion bits; a terabit, one trillion bits. As emerging technologies such as optical networking increase the carrying capacity of the network backbone, corresponding demand arises for products that can route and switch traffic at increasingly higher rates and capacities. Cisco now believes, with the acquisition, that it will have a scalable switching fabric technology and systems expertise to develop the next-generation of switches and routers. "To date, the commercialization of this invention, made from a government-funded research project, has generated more than 55 jobs and tax revenue of over $70 million," said Edward R. Fickensher, technology business development manager at Washington University. "Most importantly, the improved communications capability resulting from this commercialization effort will take the Internet to another level, which will greatly benefit the public. We wish the inventors and employees of Growth Networks our best in their continued endeavors with Cisco."
Parulkar's research emphasis has been on high-speed"internetworking" with high quality of service guarantees. A linchpin of Growth Networks is Turner's internationally recognized expertise in the design and analysis of switching systems. He holds more than twenty patents on designs for high-speed switching systems.
Cox has been a faculty member at Washington University since 1955 and has been a major player in a number of key communications advances in telemedicine and other communications areas.
Turner and Cox initiated a research project in 1988 with corporate telecommunications partners that created the technical foundation that has led to Growth Networks Inc. Called Project Zeus, the research was a prototype campuswide network with links to two of Southwestern Bell's St. Louis facilities. A high-speed, fiber-optic communications network, it transmitted voice, video, data and high-resolution images simultaneously at pioneering speeds.
"It's very satisfying to see a vision that has been a long time in the works become real," said Turner, who began high-speed switching research in the 1980s. "The efforts of the ARL now become part of a large, important company such as Cisco, and we expect the technology will make a significant impact on the world at large."