Thread regarding Cisco Systems Inc. layoffs

Bigswitch? Are they still in business?

Didn't ACI k--l openflow and all its faithful followers?

Isn't going to "safe" the company? Seriously, people need to learn to spell and review. The quality of posts on this board have gone down. Can't take a post like this seriously.

Cisco's advanced services isn't going to safe the company any more than yet another version of the Cat6k. There's no thought leadership there, just more PDI for installations, migrations and upgrades. We're already automated bug scrubs and farming out HLD/LLD to India to reduce our costs. Most AS engineers couldn't program their way out of a paper bag and have no idea what to do when a customer wants to run BigSwitch, Contrail or Calico. We just keep pitching "spine-leaf", 40GbE to the server, 100GbE to the spine...

Sales doesn't even want to sell services, it's too hard. So much easier to just sell Smartnet without having to deal with customers telling us, "If your equipment is so easy to use, why do I need to pay another $500k for professional services?"

1) debt is 33b per yahoo finance.

2) most financial leverage comes from core biz. As share shrinks, those businesses are going to be a lessor contributor to profits.

3) software is 25 years old, in multiple OS's and can't be unbundled.

These are truth, not whining. Whining is that my manager is now preparing fourth set of strategy slides in last month.

Cisco's way out is our advanced services. That's where our growth and our future is. Will services backfill declining hw sales? No. But we will have a more sustainable revenue model in-line with the cloud. ;-)

If you think Meraki is growth, it's not. It canabalising Cisco own business. Security missed its growth projections last quarter.

Cisco is not screwed, it is just due to go through some substantial downsizing when the move to public cloud finally happens.

Look at VM Ware's share price YTD compared with Cisco's. This gives you an idea where the market is heading. If Cisco wasn't using its cash to pay out 4% dividend yields its share price would be around $16.

Cisco needs to buy companies, the problem is they don't know what to do with them once they've bought them. While they can integrate them quickly into our IT systems, we can't integrate them into our broader portfolio. So we run them like Meraki, on their own.

Cisco has bright Spots in Wireless, Security and virtualized solutions. Routing and switching and service provider space are dragging company down. Cisco need not always have to be $50 Billion Dollar company.

Cisco might be making $40 Billion Dollar and have a headcount of 50K instead of current 72K. All companies selling Hardware are in serious trouble. Take Dell, IBM, HP, Ericsson, Huawei, Juniper, Intel etc. are also facing lot of churn.

Microsoft , Google, Amazon and Facebook have entered directly in cloud and virtualized world so they are experiencing good growth.

But customers also see company's ability to support the product post deployment. Most of small companies are building great products but we don’t know their financial viability once products are deployed and ability to scale up. Cisco has stopped innovation and relied mostly on acquisitions, we don’t know if one acquisition can really click and Cisco can make profits. Cisco has cash to play around.

Cisco has got 2 to 3 yrs to get its act together otherwise we have to see Cisco curtailing its business portfolios and concentrate on certain growth areas.

This is the wrong site to ask "Is Cisco Screwed".

All posters on here are moaners. Their default is that they think management is cr*p and that they know best and that the company will surely fail. Then the yanks wake up and their default position is that the Indians are ruining Cisco. Its pretty much the same for every post.

No Cisco isn't really screwed. I suspect my view is in a minority though. Its like all big companies...it has ups and downs. It hires and fires. But Cisco is generally ticking along OK.

Cisco's debt is low, around $6bn. It has doubled in the past 4 years, which coincides with the mass redundancies.

Cisco makes over 65% gross margin on its products. The majority of it's revenue is from hardware. The question is, if Cisco does start selling its software separately from its hardware what impact will that have on its revenues, who will pickup all the hardware revenue and will it even be able to compete on a pure software bases against someone like VMWare for example? How much is the software even worth? If you spend $100k on a DC switch which includes SW in the price, how much someone is willing to pay for the SW alone is not known, as there hasn't been any real market competition in a pure SW SDN market. What if VMWare, AWS or Microsoft, decide to bundle their networking SW in their ELA's?

Truth is Cisco is in a catch 22 situation. They know they need to drop the hardware side of their business as the market is shifting to SDN type solutions. But if Cisco validates a pure software approach, it might end up in intense competition that it's never seen before. Plus by dropping HW you can be assured it's revenues will drop by 30-50%.

Cisco has proved many times before, that it doesn't make the right decisions at the right times. Take Public Cloud, there is no reason that Cisco couldn't have been the first to the market, yet instead it relied on partners to do it for them and now they face the consequences.

Cisco's day will come in the next 3-5 years when the mass move to public cloud happens and everyone stops buying their own networking. None of the big public cloud providers use Cisco kit, so it will be extremely damaging.

Cisco is screwed with the current leadership/culture. Significant changes must be made soon to ensure Cisco is not the next Xerox or 3M.

Yes. There is no technical depth inside the company. Software is a word and not a business strategy. I think we will become a services business increasingly and be in trouble. Also, folks like to say how much cash we have. Anyone looked at the debt?

No, we are not.

Cisco is screwed in hardware, hence the transition from hardware to software. The article provides useful information on the subscription business model but does not provide information on the total addressable market and what Cisco's competitive position is in the market it competes in. We know Cisco grew to a dominant position in networking hardware sold to enterprise and service provider customers when everyone needed to be connected to the internet a.k.a the cloud. Now that everyone is connected, Cisco will continue to migrate as much of its current revenue and profit to the new business model but how much revenue and profit is that going to be in 5 years time in unknown. I believe Cisco's revenue will continue to decline but will remain a viable business for some time. With $65B in cash, it can continue to make acquisitions to support it's business strategy and emerging business model.