Neither Cisco, nor the members of the Cisco team have looked back since. In 1995 John Chambers assumed the helm as CEO and John Morgridge moved up to chair the board. During the last five years of the twentieth century, Cisco continued to grow at an average rate of over 40 percent a year, eclipsed the market cap of even GE and Microsoft in 2000, and acquired more than 70 companies to further develop and expand its market presence, product offerings, technological expertise, and headcount (see Exhibit 4). Along the way, Cisco reinvented itself as an e-business, saving more than $800 million a year ($350 million of which was attributed to the Cisco Connection Online16), a sizable portion of their 2000 net earnings of $2.6 billion.