Cisco Announces 2003 Global Channel Partner Award Winners; 16 Channel Partners Honored for Being...

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

Cisco Partner Summit 2004

HONOLULU--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 11, 2004

In an effort to highlight its top global channel partners, Cisco Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq:CSCO), today announced its 2003 annual Partner Summit Global Channel Partner

award winners. These sixteen honorees were selected from a list of nearly 3,000 Cisco Certified Channel Partners worldwide for their outstanding performance in 2003. Cisco will recognize the top global channel partners in the following categories, distribution, Gold, Silver and Premier Certification, customer Satisfaction, IP communications, mobility and security.

"I consider our channel partners as an extension of our sales capability and like any good sales organization we want to recognize and reward our top performers," said Paul Mountford, senior vice president, Worldwide Channels at Cisco Systems. "We have spent the past nine-months defining the requirements, identifying the nominees and selecting the winners of the second annual, Cisco Global Channel Awards. Last night I had the honor and the privilege of recognizing our top global performers for 2003."

The Cisco Global Awards are conferred to partners who meet a specific set of requirements, which are designed to identify the best global channel partner in each category. Cisco has also built a formalized nomination and selection process that begins with each sales theater identifying and nominating a channel partner for each category. These nominations are reviewed and a collective group that includes Cisco worldwide channels and theater channel executives makes final selections. With the exception of the Global Distribution Award, which recognizes value creation and operational excellences, all the other global awards are in compliance with the requirements of the Cisco Channel Partner Program and customer satisfaction as its foundational criterion.

The 2003 Cisco Global Channel Partners of the Year Award Winners are:

Award:                             Winner:

IP Communications                  Sentinel Technologies (United
                                    States)
Security                           Datacraft (Asia Pacific)
Mobility                           CC CompuNet (Europe, Middle East,
                                    Africa)
Gold Certification Customer        Dimension Data (United States)
 Satisfaction
Silver Certification Customer      Netcloud (Europe, Middle East,
 Satisfaction                       Africa)
Premier Certification Customer     Step Logic (Europe, Middle East,
 Satisfaction                       Africa)
Gold Certification                 Net One Systems Co., Ltd (Japan)
Silver Certification               RAM (Americas International/Canada)
Premier Certification              DataVox, Inc. (United States)
Americas International Partner of  Ingram Micro (Latin America)
 the Year
Americas International Partner of  IBM (Canada)
 the Year
U.S. Partner of the Year           Northrup Grumman Computing Systems
Japan Partner of the Year          IBM
Asia Pacific Partner of the Year   IBM
Europe, Middle East, Africa        CC CompuNet
 Partner of the Year
Distribution Partner of the Year   Ingram Micro

For more features, news, videos, and photos relating to the Cisco 2004 Partner Summit visit http://newsroom.cisco.com/partnersummit/.

Cisco Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq:CSCO) is the worldwide leader in networking for the Internet. Information about Cisco can be found at http://www.cisco.com.

Cisco, Cisco Systems, and the Cisco Systems logo are registered trademarks of Cisco Systems, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and certain other countries. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners