Cisco, which despite a market capitalisation of nearly $200 billion remains largely unknown by the man in the street, is working assiduously to raise its profile. It seems unlikely, however, that a massive probe into alleged smuggling involving its operations in South America is what the group’s marketing men had in mind.

News of a raid on Cisco’s Sao Paulo office by police and tax officials, along with reports of the seizure of $10 million in “merchandise”, a commercial jet, 18 other vehicles and the equivalent of nearly $400,000 (£200,000) in Brazilian and US currency, smacks more of Miami Vice than Silicon Valley.

The excitement is hard to square with Cisco’s speciality – the manufacture of routers and switchers, the prosaic hardware that forms the backbone of the world wide web.

Silicon Valley’s largest company has been battling as never before to garner publicity, with high-profile purchases and affiliations.

Last year it paid $6.9 billion for Scientific Atlanta, an electronics group that has sold 50 million TV set-top boxes into consumers' living rooms.

Signalling just how seriously it now takes branding, it paid another $120 million to have Oakland Athletics' baseball ground renamed "Cisco Field". The company is bent on making the stadium the "world's most technologically sophisticated baseball park" - a showcase for the next generation of networked technologies it intends to bring to people's homes.

It is most bullish on the potential for internet video, a market Cisco’s chief executive John Chambers claims will be worth as much as $20 billion, before you factor in the network upgrades it believes will be necessary to deal with surging web traffic volumes.

Citing the success of sites such as YouTube, Mr Chambers has predicted that 20 homes will generate as much network traffic by 2010 as the entire internet did in 1995. Cisco fully intends to be one of the companies carrying that surge in domestic digital data.

Amid this, the group has adopted the slogan “the human network” to sum up its vision of the future – a world in which, at work and play, Cisco products link people electronically.

If the Brazilian tax authorities’ suspicions turn out to be grounded – and its important to note that no charges have so far been made – Cisco may find itself shaking down its own human network, its staff and internal governance codes, first.

Cisco, which despite a market capitalisation of nearly $200 billion remains largely unknown by the man in the street, is working assiduously to raise its profile. It seems unlikely, however, that a massive probe into alleged smuggling involving its operations in South America is what the group’s marketing men had in mind.

News of a raid on Cisco’s Sao Paulo office by police and tax officials, along with reports of the seizure of $10 million in “merchandise”, a commercial jet, 18 other vehicles and the equivalent of nearly $400,000 (£200,000) in Brazilian and US currency, smacks more of Miami Vice than Silicon Valley.

The excitement is hard to square with Cisco’s speciality – the manufacture of routers and switchers, the prosaic hardware that forms the backbone of the world wide web.

Silicon Valley’s largest company has been battling as never before to garner publicity, with high-profile purchases and affiliations.

Last year it paid $6.9 billion for Scientific Atlanta, an electronics group that has sold 50 million TV set-top boxes into consumers' living rooms.

Signalling just how seriously it now takes branding, it paid another $120 million to have Oakland Athletics' baseball ground renamed "Cisco Field". The company is bent on making the stadium the "world's most technologically sophisticated baseball park" - a showcase for the next generation of networked technologies it intends to bring to people's homes.

It is most bullish on the potential for internet video, a market Cisco’s chief executive John Chambers claims will be worth as much as $20 billion, before you factor in the network upgrades it believes will be necessary to deal with surging web traffic volumes.

Citing the success of sites such as YouTube, Mr Chambers has predicted that 20 homes will generate as much network traffic by 2010 as the entire internet did in 1995. Cisco fully intends to be one of the companies carrying that surge in domestic digital data.

Amid this, the group has adopted the slogan “the human network” to sum up its vision of the future – a world in which, at work and play, Cisco products link people electronically.

If the Brazilian tax authorities’ suspicions turn out to be grounded – and its important to note that no charges have so far been made – Cisco may find itself shaking down its own human network, its staff and internal governance codes, first.

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