Thread regarding Cisco Systems Inc. layoffs

Cisco is not the innovative[acquisition] giant that folks looked up to like it once was in the late 90’s.

FTFY.

Networking is now a commodity, no matter what BS Cisco says.

As a customer I hate Cisco in so many ways but they're still producing products that do things I need that their competitors don't so Cisco still wins some of my business.

The part of networking that has been truly commoditized are the "no/low services" gigabit Ethernet switch and access point markets.

Cisco is not the innovative giant that folks looked up to like it once was in the late 90’s. Networking is now a commodity, no matter what BS Cisco says. It invents solutions such as SDA and ACI to sales-contrived pain-points that do not exist or can be solved in simpler ways. There are some
Interesting solutions such as Spaces and FSO and secure access but Cisco will strangle them with code quality, complexity and licensing problems, as they do with everything these days. Great pity really what could have been.

Cisco is a junkyard.

what about Fortinet, Checkpoint, Forcepoint, Infinera and Calix.

Cisco needs to focus on R&D like the Magnificent 7. Many left for the magnificent 7 companies. They need a TECH CEO, not a marketing executive.

There is a lot of cr-p work now at the "magnificent 7" companies now as well, and most of the top technical companies make money by collecting and selling data on billions with which they have direct contact. Cisco can't play there.

Infinite growth doesn't exist and simply being able to say "we have a TECH CEO" doesn't mean that person could overcome 40 years of absolute incompetence in software, which is a problem for a company that identifies as a "software company." You'll never find someone with the talent to do this who would destroy their career fixing legacy when they could lead new development. Even if someone could completely rehabilitate the entire software development infrastructure you're still left with the problem of "what new market segment can you get significant year over year growth maintaining the margins Cisco's investors expect and where Cisco can stave off competitors to maintain a leadership position?"

Agreed. Unless a more technical ELT is established and the cult of personality is removed the inexorable slide of Cisco into irrelevance will continue.

Federal government and army, navy and airforce depends on Cisco to provide networking services and security. They recently acquired Splunk, they have a large enterprise customers.

Cisco won’t close down any time soon. They still control routing, switching, WAN and wireless market.

Cisco needs to focus on R&D like the Magnificent 7. Many left for the magnificent 7 companies. They need a TECH CEO, not a marketing executive.

If you're going to include HPE you might as well add Dell to the mix. HPE doesn't even use a variant of the word "network" in the name of their operating segments. It's "Intelligent Edge" which was only 10% of the company's 2020 revenue. Source:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hewlett_Packard_Enterprise#Corporate_affairs

Counting 10% of HPE, the numbers from @tkm+1q5TycHx are 56B for Cisco and 23.5B for all the rest. Noting that the rest of the word rounds 56.998 to 57 instead of 56 Cisco is generating roughly twice the revenue of all the rest together.

Using the body counts from @fts+1q5TycHx while using only 10% of HPE, Cisco is 85K versus 43K for the rest which is slightly less than twice the rest together.

Market capitalization is far more random and therefore not very useful. Cisco was never worth $82 and was undervalued at $8 shortly thereafter. When putting Cisco in the top 20 tech companies the fact that both revenue and market cap put it there is a nice confirmation.

Looking at operating margin(ttm):

Cisco: 30.20%

PANW: 11.46%
HPE: 7.77%
JNPR: 10.74%
ANET: 39.93%
ZS: -9.27% (yes, that's a minus sign)

Arista is dusting Cisco here but the numbers I've seen for an average S&P 500 company seems to be around 17% which makes all but Cisco and Arista pretty weak. Since Arista has been at it for more than 24 years and has a bit over 10% of Cisco's revenue Cisco isn't exactly being "swallowed."

Yes, the ratios have all been thought through and set at levels necessary for an executive team to leverage their compensation funding in a long-term business now in its "cash cow" market evolution cycle.

It is important to keep a healthy reserve of 85k headcount so that the salary expense can be cashed in as needed via LR cycles, and converted to high-end executive compensation pools, to include options.

In the current phase of the company lifecycle, it is difficult to tie end executive compensation rewards to new product innovation or revenue growth, so the funding is easier to convert from ongoing restructuring pools.

Think about it. This IS the business model. It pays off for a very small circle of highly-compensated people. WE are not them, nor never will be.

Revenue;

Csco: $56B

PANW: $7B
JNPR: $5.6B
ANET: $6B
HPE: $29B
ZS: $2B

Total Emplpyees

Cissco; 85k

PAN: 15k
HPE: 60k
JNPR: 11k
ANET: 5k
ZS: 6k