What Cisco Said
The Cisco Newsroom Record on Digital Island, 1998-2001
Everything on this page is a quotation from Cisco Systems’ own newsroom, on Cisco’s own domain, where every entry remains live and checkable as of this writing. These are not my words about Digital Island. They are Cisco’s words, published between 1998 and 2001, describing what Digital Island was and what it did. I have selected and dated them; I have not altered them. Click any source link and verify.
One framing note. I co-founded Digital Island in 1996 and was pushed out in May 1999, three weeks after the IPO registration was filed. The entries through May 1999 describe the company during my tenure: the network, the architecture, and the purpose I helped build. The entries after May 1999 describe the trajectory of that same machine, running on what was already built.
During My Tenure
January 20, 1998: “Digital Island’s Cisco Powered Network Leverages Cisco IOS Software with First Internet Applications Engine for Electronic Commerce”
Read that headline date again: January 1998, and the words “for Electronic Commerce.” Then read how Cisco described the company:
“…the first global overnet that provides multinational corporations with a single-hop, scalable applications network.”
“…a private network that combines an efficient, global, single-hop architecture with a powerful Internet Applications Engine for the reliable, cost effective deployment of Internet business applications.”
“…directly connects to the Internet in local global markets, bypassing the congestion and chokepoints of the public Internet.”
“…Digital Island offers maximized performance level guarantees that are generally unavailable through the public Internet.”
There it is, in Cisco’s words in 1998: a private network, bypassing the public internet’s chokepoints, with performance guarantees the public internet could not give, built for electronic commerce. That is merchant transport described by a third party while it was running. Cisco even had a period word for the network class: an “overnet.”
Source: Cisco Newsroom, January 20, 1998
October 21, 1998: “Cisco Systems Announces First Service Provider Partner Pavilion at NetWorld+Interop ’98 Atlanta”
“Digital Island provides multinational corporations conducting E-business with a sustainable competitive advantage through the innovative integration of applications, patented technologies, and intelligent network services.”
Cisco’s one-paragraph summary of the company in late 1998: E-business, multinational, patented technologies. Not a hosting shop. Not an ISP. A commerce network.
Source: Cisco Newsroom, October 21, 1998
January 1999: “More Than 30 Industry Partners Support Cisco Strategy For Delivering High-Speed Internet Services and Products to Consumer Market”
Digital Island appears in Cisco’s partner roll call alongside Bell Atlantic, GTE, Deutsche Telekom, Equant, and Embratel: a three-year-old startup listed among the incumbent carriers of the world.
Source: Cisco Newsroom, January 1999
May 12, 1999: “Cisco Systems Announces Second Cisco Powered Network Service Provider Partner Pavilion at NetWorld+Interop ’99 Las Vegas”
“Digital Island has designed a global IP applications platform to deploy business-critical applications, using an intelligent network. Digital Island’s solutions allow customers to reach new markets faster, with the reliable performance necessary to support the most demanding E-business challenges.”
Dated May 12, 1999: the same month I was walked out, weeks before the June 29 IPO. This is Cisco’s description of the platform as I left it.
Source: Cisco Newsroom, May 12, 1999
After My Tenure: The Machine Kept Running
September 27, 1999: “Cisco Delivers ContentFlow Architecture as a Key Enabler of the Internet Economy”
“The rules are changing for global content distribution, placing increasing emphasis on the ability to deliver an excellent end user experience that is locally relevant anywhere in the world. As a Cisco Powered Network, Digital Island is able to provide a sophisticated set of services for e-Business that enable corporations to intelligently distribute content in a way that promotes customer retention and loyalty worldwide.” (Tim Wilson, Vice President of Marketing, Digital Island)
May 5, 2000: “Cisco Systems to Keynote at Networld+Interop Show”
Cisco’s keynote featured three service provider case studies. One of them, verbatim from the release:
“Service Provider: Digital Island/Content Hosting Service. Customer: Financial Times’ ft.com”
Third-party confirmation of a name on the customer list I have cited for years: the Financial Times, served by the network we built.
Source: Cisco Newsroom, May 5, 2000
August 28, 2000: “Cisco, Cable & Wireless, Digital Island, Genuity, GlobalCenter, Mirror Image Internet, NaviSite, Network Appliance, PSINet, and ServInt form Content Alliance”
Digital Island as a charter member of the industry group formed to standardize content delivery: named in the headline itself, alongside Cable & Wireless, the company that would buy it a year later for $340 million in cash.
Source: Cisco Newsroom, August 28, 2000; expanded September and October 2000 with AOL, EMC, Sun Microsystems and others joining.
May 7, 2001: “Cisco Announces Content Services Designation within the Cisco Powered Network Program”
“Digital Island (NASDAQ: ISLD) is integrating Cisco content networking products into its content delivery, managed hosting and network services to help provide customers a fast, reliable and consistent global network for profitable e-Business transactions.”
Three years after the 1998 release, Cisco’s language is unchanged: fast, reliable, consistent, global, e-Business transactions. The purpose never wavered because the purpose was the founding design.
Source: Cisco Newsroom, May 7, 2001. A companion e-learning release the same month quotes Ruann Ernst as chairman and CEO of Digital Island.
What the Record Shows
Line up the dates and the language does the arguing. In January 1998, Cisco describes a private global network that bypasses the public internet’s congestion and chokepoints and offers performance guarantees the public internet cannot, built for electronic commerce. Through 1998 and 1999 the descriptions hold: E-business, multinational corporations, business-critical, reliable performance. In 2000 a named customer appears: the Financial Times. In 2001, the same purpose, verbatim in spirit: “profitable e-Business transactions.”
This is what merchant transport looks like when a third party describes it: the transaction-grade, deterministic, private carriage that the public internet of the era could not provide. I invented the concept running a storefront in a garage; Digital Island made it real; and Cisco, the company that built the internet’s routers, put its name on the description year after year. The full argument is on this site: the 1996 Cisco contract, the Perfect Wheels genesis, and why the internet’s architects didn’t make ecommerce. This page is simply the part Cisco wrote.
All quotations verbatim from Cisco Newsroom pages live at newsroom.cisco.com as of July 2026. Archived copies of each release are preserved against link rot.