ATLANTA + SAN JOSE, Calif., June 2, 2003 - Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSCO), today made several strategic announcements, furthering its momentum and commitment to the service provider market. Executing on all three elements of its strategy to work with service providers to build, deploy and generate demand for new and profitable services, Cisco? announced new customer deployments, technology and service advancements, and marketing relationships, all at the Supercomm 2003 Conference in Atlanta.

Highlights of the Cisco announcements include:

Demand generation?Cisco announced a new strategic relationship with BellSouth allowing the companies to jointly deliver, market and accelerate demand for voice and data managed services, such as network VPN, metro Ethernet and next-generation SONET, to businesses in the Southeast United States.

Building Extensible and efficient infrastructure?BellSouth has selected Cisco optical multiservice provisioning platform (MSPP) solutions as part of its plan to enhance its existing network infrastructure and deliver expanded service options for customers throughout its nine-state region. In addition, new technology enhancements made to Cisco next-generation broadband-aggregation products set new levels of scale, service flexibility and performance. These enhancements enable service providers to better utilize their existing network infrastructures to create and deploy new, profitable services that their business customers demand.

Deploying Services?Cisco recently announced the availability of a new solution that integrates IP Security (IPSec) - and Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS)-based VPNs. This advancement allows service providers to extend their MPLS VPN service footprint out-of-region through seamless integration with IPSec. This, for the first time, offers "any-to-any" connectivity services and extends the transport efficiency and operational benefits that it brings, while still enabling the IPSec-based services, such as secure remote access and branch connectivity that are in high demand by customers. This opens up a whole set of new possible revenue streams to the service provider while easing implementation challenges for both the provider and the end users.

"Today's announcements underscore Cisco's commitment to the service provider industry," said Sameer Padhye, vice president of service provider marketing at Cisco. "Service providers are embracing our unique, three-part market strategy of partnering with customers to build an efficient and extensible network infrastructure; developing new, profitable services that our enterprise/SMB customers need today and can also help generate new revenue streams for the service provider. At the same time, we are working with service providers to creating joint marketing programs to accelerate the demand for these services."

Padhye continued, "Coupled with this strategy are our world-class customer support and significant research and development commitment over the next five years. By combining all of these factors, we are creating a win-win environment for Cisco, the end users who need advanced services to advance their network and business productivity, and our service provider customers who need new approaches to generate profitable revenue."

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Source: Cisco Systems