How Cisco Systems Used Enterprise Architecture Capability to Sustain Acquisition-Based Growth

Enterprise architecture (EA) enables organizations to coordinate, execute and sustain business transformations, which can be triggered in various ways, including restructuring and acquisitions. This article explains how Cisco Systems, a multinational corporation headquartered in San Jose, California, with business primarily in networking equipment and related services, leverages its EA capability to support its growth-by-acquisition strategy.3 (The research methodology is described in Appendix 1.) We show how EA contributes to Cisco’s ability to capture value from its acquisitions and to sustain its acquisition-based growth strategy over time. Acquiring other businesses is a major component of many organizations’ corporate strategies. Appropriately executed, acquisitions enable business benefits of scale and scope, give access to unique resources and support strategic renewal. However, integrating acquired businesses is challenging and complex, which means that acquisitions frequently do not create financial value for the acquirer.4 Either the potential recombination synergies are overestimated in the pre-acquisition evaluation of the target, or the acquirer does not succeed in realizing the potential synergistic effects in post-acquisition integration.