Hi Team, it‘s Chuck here. Thanks for all you do here on this board, it means a lot to me and the ELT.
Just wanted to give you a heads up as we‘re moving into a critical week with earnings and Cisco Live EMEA in Amsterdam.
First of all, Jeetu will announce a self-serving AI for Webex that will hold meetings without any human attendance. We will use this only internally for now, but he’ll go big on it on stage. This is a step change in our AI strategy and positions us as the strategic IT partner we never were.
We‘re also going to announce a big acquisition in Security. The plans to botch the integration are already in place. I can‘t say the name but the acquisition will be strategic and expensive and will complement our portfolio ideally to create overlap exactly where we need it. The acquisition will also distract from our earnings, which brings me to the next topic.
We executed well against our strategy, leading to a decline in all key indicators. In key areas like Campus Switching we‘re well in the double digits. Out product strategy is really helping here. Customer feedback is terrible across the board and in line with expectations. We will lower our guidance for the current quarter and for the full year, thanks to declining recurring revenue from customers who decommissioned our gear well before we had projected.
Of course there will be layoffs, but in our best tradition, I‘m not going to share when they‘ll start or end or how many people will be affected and in which parts of the world or in which business unit. All I can say is they‘ll be massive yet random. Please keep an eye on short-term invites from your manager. I want to get this right as layoffs are at the heart of our culture.
To close us out, I wanna say hi from Georgia; Fran, I love your hair; Jeetu, I love your belt buckle; don‘t forget Black History Month; and always wipe from front to back.
- Chuck