The Salutation Consortium today announced that Cisco Systems, Inc. has joined the Salutation Consortium and will participate in developing an industry-standard protocol for locating and controlling computers, consumer devices, and office equipment across the Internet or a company intranet.

"Future enhancements to the Salutation protocols will provide technology for a user to search a network enterprise-wide to locate a particular device or resource. Cisco's expertise in enterprise internetworking and its work with standards organizations such as the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) make the company an important addition to the Salutation team," said Mary Hill, managing director of the Salutation Consortium.

"As network appliances, intelligent peripherals, and handheld computers proliferate, the networks that link them becomes even more mission-critical to a business. Cisco is participating in this effort to bring the industry an open standard that lets users find out what devices and services are on the network. This is an important step toward interoperability in network computing," said Ed Kozel, Chief Technical Officer of Cisco Systems. "Cisco supports Salutation in its efforts to make the network infrastructure easier to use and to deliver more capabilities."

About Cisco Systems, Inc.

Cisco Systems (NASDAQ: CSCO) is the leading global supplier of enterprise internetworking solutions, including routers, LAN and ATM switches, dial-up access servers and network management software. These products, integrated by the Cisco IOS software, link geographically dispersed LANs, WANs and IBM networks. Cisco news and product/service information are available at world wide web site http://www.cisco.com. Cisco is headquartered in San Jose, Calif.

About the Salutation Consortium

The Salutation Consortium is a non-profit corporation with member organizations in the United States, Europe, and Japan. Member companies include APTi, Axis Communications, Brother, Canon, Casio, Cisco, Eastman Kodak, Fuji Xerox, Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi, Integrated Systems, IBM, Iwatsu, JustSystems, Kobe Steel, Konica, Lexmark, Matsushita, Microware Systems, Minolta, Mita, Mitsubishi, Murata (Muratec), Novell, Oki Data, Ricoh, Rios Systems, Sanyo, Seiko Epson, Sharp, Sun Microsystems, Toshiba, and Xerox.

The Salutation Architecture specification is available on the Consortium's web site.