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Company Visit at cisco’s

Pierre Lorent and Pierre Vyncke

6 décembre 2010

1 Introduction

This report is about the visit of cisco (the name takes no capital because itcomes from "San Francisco" as explained later by our guide) we made to helpus choose our options for the second part of the year. This visit was organisedThursday October 14th, 2010.

This company is the leader in Networking in general, and develops routers,switches and other useful networking facilities (automatic data transmission de-vices, "online" conference rooms) to be used by other companies.

It was founded in 1984 by a couple, Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner. Theywanted to nd a way to email each other because they didn’t work at the sameplace and technology didn’t allow them to do it yet. That’s how the rst routerwas invented and how all cisco started.

Now, cisco has the market leadership in lots of elds like digital video(IPTV), wireless, routing and conferencing and made more than 10 billions dol-lars a year turnover. 70 000 employees works in 400 offices spreaded in 160 coun-tries with the same objectives, “Best in the World" and "Best for the World".

2 Why did we choose to visit cisco ?

2.1 Pierre Lorent

I chose to visit this company because I really like learning how computers

and networks are built inside. I’m really interested in the development of newtechnologies and now we all need computing sciences and electronics to be thebest. Since secondary school I’m learning programming on computers on myown so choosing Computing sciences as a 2nd bac option now at the universityis like following a long-haul project. Moreover, having a good formation withcomputers can always help and my father is happy when I help him recoversome lost les or other things he’s unable to do.

2.2 Pierre Vyncke

Since I wasn’t really sure about what option I should take for the second half of this year, I saw in visiting cisco a great opportunity to conrm my choice of

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taking Computing Sciences as the major option. Moreover, it happened that one

of the speakers of the day was my father who invited me to visit his company,which made me understand his job more deeply. At the end of the visit, I wasreally glad I visited cisco because it made me see an other reality of being anengineer, other than solving integrals. And it also conrmed my option choicefor this year.

3 The Visit

To be on time at the cisco Diegem building, near Brussels, we needed toleave at quarter past eight. Not so early compared to some other groups. Whenwe arrived, we received a sticker with our names written on it to be put on ourcoat. It was also written “To be escorted”. We all founded it funny. We had some

extra time before the visit started so the company representative offered us acup of hot chocolate as a welcome present (To cisco’s charge of course).

To start the day, Michael Neefs, a Systems Engineer, explains the agendathen tells us what cisco is about.

We then got to meet 2 Pre-Sales Engineer who try to sale cisco products tobig companies (Voo, Belgacom, . . .) from the tech side (how the cisco productsare better on the tech side, how it works better, how it will be more efficient),while “real” vendors will try to sale cisco products by reducing the price or withother economic methods.

After a great lunch at the cafeteria we met an engineer from the TAC (Tech-nical Assistance Centre), which helps clients to solve any problem they arehaving with their network. He enabled us to see their lab where they got loadsof routers, switches, cables and other cisco products (they keep products theyhave stopped selling until 5 years ago). They have huge fans to keep the roomat a rather low temperature.

Afterwards we entered a rather large room designed like half a conferenceroom, the other half being actually somewhere else in the world and is replacedhere by large HD screens. You therefore can have teleconferences with anybodyelse on the earth that has the same kind of room. We were lucky enough toenjoy that experience with a Dutch employer that used the same kind of roomin Amsterdam.

To nish the day, we had the chance to meet 2 Distinguished Engineer : EricVyncke and Frédéric Detienne. They told us about the actual aspect of being anengineer at cisco (none of the other speakers of the day were engineers), whichwas to our minds the best moment of the day.

But then it was unfortunately time we left if we didn’t want to get stuck inthe traffic jam.

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4 Conclusion

During this day we learnt a lot about how cisco works but also a lot aboutnew technologies for the future. That’s why we both enjoyed the tour. It alsoseemed that in cisco, coworkers were more of friends than really formal col-leagues. And this is true for relationships with members higher in the hierarchytoo. If I have the opportunity to be employed there when I nish my studies Iwill take it.

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