"Cisco has nothing left except WebEx. DC business lost to Arista and cloud. Security is PAN for business, Fortinet in public sector. Traditional telephony is RingCentral. One more generation of LAN engineers to go and Cosco will lose the LAN/Wan footprint."
I saw this in a different thread, not my post. It deserves a thread of its own, I hope it turns into a discussion ;-)
Webex continues to struggle and that is not likely going to change! Cisco has a better chance at making it in security, full-stack observability, hardware, or what AI is in Splunk.
The new features in Webex Meetings are mostly basic stuff that should already have been there, or integrating third party AI. It's not as innovative as we pretend. Microsoft Teams owns the small business market due to the Office package. Zoom has medium to large businesses and virtually all the consumer space. Zoom and Webex compete in large enterprises and government, but both services are so close in features it is all about price now, and Zoom has the edge. We do have an edge with Messaging and Control Hub, but seldom those drive the new sales. If anything, just retaining a few large customers who would have a hard time moving.
I'm concerned for Webex Calling too, as most of the senior leadership and visionary people in Calling are no longer with Cisco. Calling Sales and Sales Engineering is not near what it once was either. You can only milk a cash cow so long, and then she dries up.
When the US Government realizes how much Cisco does in China, Cisco is in trouble. Cisco is slowly becoming a company staffed in China, India, and Mexico. The US is continually being cut back, as is the UK, Japan, and Australia.
Poland is still hanging in there. Hong Kong seems OK too. South Africa has been getting lots of love lately because Fran loves going there.
Portugal is actually doing better as several Execs like going there. It is sad how business decisions are made based on Executive preference.
I tell you a joke, Cisco will be the No.1 software company.
The CAGR of Cisco is trending negative over the past decade.
I would have predicted far worse by now. Moore's law says 1Gb/s Ethernet should be over 4,000 times cheaper per port and 10Gb/s Ethernet should be over 1,000 times cheaper per port since they were released, which means the lower end players should have completely commoditized this space, particularly since 2.5Gb/s and 5Gb/s have been almost dormant until recently. Other companies with world class data centers developing white box networking gear should have eaten more into higher end products.
I hope it turns into a discussion ;-)
Let's try looking beyond a particular product line.
Negatives:
Not entirely positive or negative:
Positive:
None of these lead to a clear path to bankruptcy or $100B/yr in revenue. Big ships turn slow so even if Cisco has a great or awful quarter it will take a number of quarters to establish a true long term trend.
Folks who quote $$. You miss inflation. The CAGR of Cisco is trending negative over the past decade. Hugely overvalued. Propped up by massive share buybacks and large dividends. Look under the hood and there’s an old ICE engine in the days of EV.
WebEx will first to die
Zoom,MS teams or googles is better.WebEx will be others soon
are you kidding? Webex is the business declining in 3 consecutive quarters.
The issue with telephony is not RingCentral, but Microsoft. Since Covid, many customers have moved to Teams for meetings and for the users that do need telephony in an organization, just go with Microsoft since everyone is already using it.
For the customers that do stay with us, they are not buying new phones and replacing with soft clients. Cisco makes (or should I say MADE) a lot of money on hardware just selling phones so that side of the hardware business is going to continue to decline.
I'm work NSA. Cisco not good so much security problem in product made Cisco.
@1zod Diversity is our strength
"Cisco will continue to do well in the government space, but the margins are very low."
Gov person here. We are moving away from all cisco products and services as fast as possible. There are exceptions of course, but the overall view is negative towards Cisco.
Number of reasons. One I can't tell you in detail, but involves a very serious security issue. Maybe stop hiring problematic staff from adversarial nations.
Our Cisco innovation is all via acquisition these days.
These days? Try the past 30 years:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_Cisco
Without adjusting for inflation you're still over $100,000,000,000 in acquisitions. One of the acquisitions is WebEx on March 15, 2007 for $3.200,000,000.
Cisco is ki-ling our Webex employees with layoffs and very limited backfills. The Webex team is claiming all kinds of AI innovation, but it is basic API work anyone can do with off-the-shelf API (e.g., grammar check and wordsmith), not internal innovation like Cisco wants people to think. So this will catch up to us soon. Our Cisco innovation is all via acquisition these days.
Webex Calling is still doing fairly well against RingCentral, but Webex Calling had big layoffs in Sales in March. RingCentral can't seem to get their act together, but if they do, Cisco is in trouble. It seems like the leadership and visionaries in Calling have mostly left Cisco, so both Meetings and Calling will be struggling soon, especially in the innovation front. Cisco will continue to do well in the government space, but the margins are very low.
If you are in Webex Meetings or Calling, start looking before Cisco takes you out to make our budget targets!
Whatever you are smoking I want it! Who is your supplier? Cisco just had one of their best years ever record profits
It has had to innovate how it sells stuff by transitioning so that it does not give software away.
Cisco removed the lifetime software support on many products ages ago. You're still shipping software where whole subsystems don't even come up. You're lucky your competitors are laid off Cisco people.
On the larger systems your customers do all the QA over a period of years, something which Cisco should be paying for without the ability to raise the price after the customer has taken possession.
I now understand why many offices around the US are closing in the upcoming two years no matter how big the project is.
Wrong. Cisco still has a lot of good stuff. It has had to innovate how it sells stuff by transitioning so that it does not give software away. Like it or loathe it, that is the direction of the whole industry and Cisco has had to evolve too. Sure there is a sh-t load of issues at Cisco with quality and morale and nepotism but Cisco still has some good stuff on the wagon and it can still come good but it needs a new CEO and ELT to clear out all the sh-t. That day is near IMO.
I agree except it’s still rolling in $55B a year.
You can save a lot of money with Kirkland brand switches
Costco has the best cheese!
I love Costco! They will not lose their footprint.