I seem to recall that older versions of Ubuntu allowed me to connect to my work's Cisco VPN connection.
When I went to add my VPN profile to Ubuntu 10.04, the only VPN connection option available was "PPTP".
You have to add the "VPNC" plugin.
sudo apt-get -y install network-manager-vpnc
You should be able to select "Cisco Compatible VPN (vpnc)" when you go to add a VPN connection now.
You may get an error when you try to connect, such as "there were no valid VPN secrets".
To fix that, you need to run the following command to restart networking:
sudo restart network-manager