Sentient Networks, Inc., was an American networking hardware company that manufactured of Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) and

Frame Relay Frame Relay is a standardized wide area network (WAN) technology that specifies the physical and data link layers of digital telecommunications channels using a packet switching methodology. Originally designed for transport across Integrated Se ...

concentrator In the evolution of modern telecommunications systems there was a requirement to connect large numbers of low-speed access devices with large telephone company 'central office' switches over common paths. During the first generations of digital netw ...

s and switches for central offices. Founded in 1995 in

Sarasota, Florida Sarasota () is a city in Sarasota County on the Gulf Coast of the U.S. state of Florida. The area is renowned for its cultural and environmental amenities, beaches, resorts, and the Sarasota School of Architecture. The city is located in the sout ...

, the company soon after moved to

San Jose, California San Jose, officially San José (; ; ), is a major city in the U.S. state of California that is the cultural, financial, and political center of Silicon Valley and largest city in Northern California by both population and area. With a 2020 popul ...

. It was acquired by

Cisco Systems Cisco Systems, Inc., commonly known as Cisco, is an American-based multinational corporation, multinational digital communications technology conglomerate (company), conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develo ...

in 1999.

History

Sentient Networks was founded in 1995 by Nimish Shah, who previously an employee of Loral Data Systems in

, before the latter subsidiary was shut down. He founded Sentient in

Tampa Bay, Florida Tampa Bay is a large natural harbor and shallow estuary connected to the Gulf of Mexico on the west-central coast of Florida, comprising Hillsborough Bay, McKay Bay, Old Tampa Bay, Middle Tampa Bay, and Lower Tampa Bay. The largest freshwater in ...

; the company soon saw

venture capital Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which ha ...

backing from companies such as

Sequoia Capital Sequoia Capital is an American venture capital firm. The firm is headquartered in Menlo Park, California, and specializes in seed stage, early stage, and growth stage investments in private companies across technology sectors. , Sequoia's total a ...

Accel Partners,

AT&T AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the world's largest telecommunications company by revenue and the third largest provider of mobile tel ...

, and Ameritech. By late 1996, the company employed 35 and had leased a 6,000-square-foot building in Sarasota for its headquarters and a 1,000-square-foot facility in

, as a regional office. In September 1996, the company moved its entire operations to a 26,000-square-foot facility in San Jose. Sentient made products for

Internet service providers An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise privatel ...

interexchange carrier An interexchange carrier (IXC), in U.S. legal and regulatory terminology, is a type of telecommunication company, commonly called a long-distance telephone company. It is defined as any carrier that provides services across multiple local access ...

s, and

Regional Bell Operating Companies The Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOC) are the result of '' United States v. AT&T'', the U.S. Department of Justice antitrust suit against the former American Telephone & Telegraph Company (later known as AT&T Corp.). On January 8, 198 ...

. It developed the industry's highest-density ATM Circuit Emulation Service (CES) gateway. The company's first successful product was the Ultimate 1000 network switch, which incorporated the company's new proprietary Any Service/Any Port architecture, allowing individual parts to be configured as ATM or Frame Relay switches. Released in 1996, it was purportedly the first product to comply fully with the ATM Forum's " Anchorage Accord" specification. Sentient negotiated an OEM agreement with

DSC Communitations DSC may refer to: Academia * Doctor of Science (D.Sc.) * District Selection Committee, an entrance exam in India * Doctor of Surgical Chiropody, superseded in the 1960s by Doctor of Podiatric Medicine Educational institutions * Dalton State Col ...

in 1997 for their Ultimate 1000.

, also of San Jose, announced their intent to acquire on April 8, 1999. Sentient at that point had 102 employees; its CEO was Greg McAdoo. Sentient's employees joined the Multi-Service Switching business unit (MSSBU) of Cisco, which was the part of Cisco created by their acquisition of

StrataCom StrataCom, Inc. was a supplier of Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) and Frame Relay high-speed wide area network (WAN) switching equipment. StrataCom was founded in Cupertino, California, United States, in January 1986, by 26 former employees of t ...

. The acquisition was finalized on June 25, 1999, with Sentient receiving $125 million.

References

{{reflist 1995 establishments in Florida 1996 disestablishments in Florida 1996 establishments in California 1999 disestablishments in California 1999 mergers and acquisitions American companies established in 1995 American companies disestablished in 1999 Cisco Systems acquisitions Computer companies established in 1995 Computer companies disestablished in 1999 Defunct computer companies of the United States Defunct computer hardware companies Defunct networking companies Networking hardware companies