Cascade Communications Corporation was a manufacturer of communications equipment based in

Westford, Massachusetts Westford is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was at 24,643 at the time of the 2020 United States census, 2020 Census. History Westford began as 'West Chelmsford,' a villag ...

History

Cascade was founded by Gururaj Deshpande in 1990, and was led by CEO Dan Smith, VP of Sales Mike Champa and CFO Paul Blondin. Cascade made a compact

Frame Relay Frame Relay (FR) is a standardized wide area network (WAN) technology that specifies the Physical layer, physical and data link layers of digital telecommunications channels using a packet switching methodology. Frame Relay was originally devel ...

and

Asynchronous Transfer Mode Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) is a telecommunications standard defined by the American National Standards Institute and International Telecommunication Union Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T, formerly CCITT) for digital trans ...

communication switches that were sold to telecommunication service providers worldwide. Frame Relay service was the primary data service used by companies in the mid-1990s to create secure internal communication networks between separate sites, and Cascade's equipment carried an estimated 70% of the world's Internet traffic during this time. Their most important direct competitor was StrataCom, which was acquired by

Cisco Systems Cisco Systems, Inc. (using the trademark Cisco) is an American multinational corporation, multinational digital communications technology conglomerate (company), conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develops, m ...

in 1996 for US $4B. In 1997,

Ascend Communications Ascend Communications, Inc. was an Alameda, California-based manufacturer of communications equipment that was later purchased by Lucent Technologies in 1999. Ascend Communications was founded in 1988 and taken public in 1994. Initial investo ...

acquired Cascade Communications for US $3.7 Billion, to move into ATM and

markets. Ascend was later acquired by

Lucent Technologies Lucent Technologies, Inc. was an American Multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications equipment company headquartered in Murray Hill, New Jersey, Murray Hill, New Jersey. It was established on September 30, 1996, through the div ...

in 1999 in one of the largest mergers in communications equipment history (US $24 Billion). The Cascade portion of Ascend's business was more interesting to Lucent than the modem termination business that comprised the rest of Ascend.

Legacy

Both Desh Deshpande and CEO Dan Smith profited handsomely from the acquisition, as did hundreds of Cascade employees. In addition, Cascade was notable for invigorating the telecommunications startup culture in Massachusetts in the mid 1990s. Cascade alumni were founders or key contributors to many other financially successful Boston area telecom companies in the late 1990s. Deshpande and Smith went on to found Sycamore Networks and VP of Sales Mike Champa went on to found Omnia Communications and later was the CEO of Winphoria Networks.

References

External links

* {{web archive, url=http://web.archive.org/web/19970620033941/http://www.casc.com/, title=Official website 1997 mergers and acquisitions American companies established in 1990 Companies formerly listed on the Nasdaq American companies disestablished in 1997 Companies based in Massachusetts Computer companies established in 1990 Computer companies disestablished in 1997 Defunct computer companies of the United States Defunct computer hardware companies Defunct networking companies Defunct companies based in Massachusetts