Monoprice has an 8 port GE switch for $18.99 (Eighteen Dollars and ninety-nine cents, not $1899.00 !) and a 24 port for <$300.00
Facebook FBOSS (open source switching) is free.
Amazing open source ProjecTs such as OpenStack, ON.Lab, Open Daylight, OPNFV and many others do not need (or want) expensive Cisco hardware.
And now Cisco, by initiating massive layoffs and institutionalizing cronyism and nepotism has driven off the very dedicated engineers who could have saved them.
Monoprice and Facebook are just one type of routers, there are many many more types.
There are some areas where you need simple, small, cheap routers and there are hundreds of other areas where you need scalable, high performance, latency sensitive and feature rich products of Cisco.
Get yourself educated on networking before you write such things.
Cisco will not go away anytime soon, it's bouncing back slowly.
If you want to fall for hype and some marketing headlines, go ahead and underestimate Cisco.
Folks this is nothing new. I have been in the high tech industry 35 years. Technology always moves from proprietary high margin to commoditized razor thin margins. It happened with HP/IBM/DEC mini computers and mainframes moving to PCs. It is now happening in the switching business with merchant silicon and white boxes. Private data centers are moving to AWS. I have had to reinvent myself 3 times in my career. You younger people will have to do the same. Find out what technologies AWS is hiring for and acquire skills in them. Cisco will have to reinvent itself as well. IBM did with a fair amount of success for a period of time. I knew when I joined Cisco that the ride would end sooner or later. Frankly I am surprised it lasted as long as it did.
Define conundrum: what would happen if Cisco have no LR? what would happen if Cisco does? - Answer to both is: Cisco WILL die. So, layoffs really happening or not have nothing to do with survival. Cisco current vegetative state is an opportunity for them to experiment and see what would happen if they replace current workforce to look more like what they have in at facebook or similar corporations. But this is no social media company (though many people inside think it is), so not facing reality is its demise.