Thread regarding Cisco Systems Inc. layoffs

@5ame: I was with you till here - "Like the cloud and web guys going on about their new paradigm of networking, gray box, etc and all the while spending hundreds of millions with CSCO"

Sure, but the reality is that "spending" is decreasing every quarter....quarter after quarter after quarter.

We missed the cloud transition and data centers (with our gear), just aren't going up fast enough. Like pigs at the trough, we gorged ourselves on ludicrously fat hardware and services margins for waaaaayyyy to long. Happily feeding while the market went by us. Amazon EC2, Microsoft, Azure and white boxes are here to stay.

Don't look up now, but that sound you hear behind you is the pig farmer with the bolt-gun. This little piggy is 'going to market'.

I've been around a while, and cannot tell you.how many "tech" predictions I've seen from flash suits that were completely bogus. At just one instances of time, everyone of these idiots was baying for investment in the cool new things. The suits were adamant that all desktops would be open sourced and written in Java (they aren't), all software development would be done in Ada (what's that?).

I also agree with @imkh that a lot of bluster about this industry is plain wrong. Like the cloud and web guys going on about their new paradigm of networking, gray box, etc and all the while spending hundreds of millions with CSCO.

The post Post ID: @PJiP00B-1ksx is the example of the denial mentality in companies in trouble. The poster truly believes that if Cisco gear is setup in many customers who are leading in technologies, Cisco must be in a good place. It is kind of the similar if I sell tires and if my tires are in high end cars, I must be leading the technology. The other poster thinks that IoT will bring significant revenue to Cisco. I cant see how IoT integration will take anyone to the promised land. How?

@gqd - Oh, you poor deluded fool.

Chuck and cisco have the right strategy they just don't know how to implement it because there is little mgt. Talent there. Great example is Dave Geockler. Robbins is a rookie. Rather than doing one layoff he does one a month. Moral is destroyed and the good people who are left are looking to leave. Of course Chambers left him a pile of crap. Cisco began going downhill years ago when people like Charlie G (Pure) and Jayshree (Arista) left.

Your new ways of tackling iT problems, is not really new, and you said at least 1 thing correctly "tackling" not "solving", opensource has been arround for ages, heck most of cisco producs are based arround Open Source, if you thing Open soruce will become main stream you got another thing comming and the thing you fail to see is this has nothing to do with being stuck in the 90s, it is you who can see past your lack of experince, again its pretty funny that there is no real problem that has been fixed by this, just new problems get created and sadly are not fixed, so go learn something more past Python or SDI, you will see that the world is much bigger than you think.

@getacluluzers

I feel sorry for you. Not sure what your point was but your examples were banal at best and were certainly backward looking. We (csco) will continue to participate in digitization of companies but our influence will diminish similar to other box vendors like juniper, ericsson, nokia, Huawei, etc. as the market embraces open source and cheaper ways of tackling IT problems which are not the same exotic mysteries as they were 20 years ago. Cisco and other box sellers are stuck in the 90s. Poor losers.

Anyone see the WSJ piece where a member of our Board asked, “what is a switch?” I think that tells you a lot about how we got Chuck. Plus, just listened to more of Chambers babbling. The rot is deep. Why isn’t Charlie Giancarlo our CEO? Oh, he knows what a switch is.

routing and switching boxes are commodities. The Chinese learned how to do it.

At the low end. There's a reason why major Chinese SP's have a Cisco core. And why Cisco ASICs offer better speed/watt/dollar than Broadcom.

More and more service providers are using open source and own software on cheap switches.

In experiments.

The cloud is now 10 years old. Too late.

Cisco milked this for all it's worth. Cisco is in every cloud provider. But that doesn't fit with the cloud co marketing, so it's kept secret.

I have not seen Cisco coming up with virtual reality and hologram based conference systems. That would be innovation.

They have, and they s---ed because VR/AR & hologram still have a long way to go, but still investing there.

Electric cars are examples of modern computers. It is already too late.

That's why Cisco routers are running in 10,000s of connected cars globally.

How about the Hyperloop? Already getting late.

What about Moon bases??

How about entering the robot and automation market?

Go see who's networking is driving the robots in BIG factories... yep.

Not sure why board of directors felt that bozo Chuck Robbins is would be a good CEO. He took 2 years & he still has not delivered promising results. Totally missed the market transitions. Revenue is going down every quarter. Market is happy because they getting good dividends that inflates the share prices marginally. So OPEX saving with layoffs is only way to survive & move on for now. That's his f---ed up strategy. But this in not a growth. Idiot Chuck has got no business vision or innovative ideas to turn around the company. Now he is executive chairman & thing will spiral down in a toilet.

But the chuck is good ceo because he was maths major.

Cisco don’t like spend money. Instead of building themselves elt think cheaper to buy asic from vendor. So csco spend last 15 years teaching vendor everything csco know about routers/switches/fabrics. Now these vendor ( Broadcom, avago, marvel, easychip, mellonsox )huge competitors to csco. That like training someone to replace you when you fired.

The entire ELT is composed of storytellers, and snake oil salesman. Hire executives that actually have marketable skills!

No. Hire someone who understands tech, not a sales-guy with 'future vision' only strong enough to see the next quarter.

Mind.......blown

So what's the solution? Fire Chuck and hire a CEO born in Nadela's homeland?

Astounding indeed, it happened before in the past with Microsoft entered the Mobile market with Steve Balmer which almost ruined them,

it always happens when instead of sticking with your identity and do what you do best you try to copy someone else s strategy.

+1

Cisco’s biggest problem is that they are marketing to a ghost customer base. And it’s astounding to watch. Corporate honestly believes that they are another Apple, Google, Facebook, or Amazon. They spend most of their time, effort, and dollars marketing to a millennial audience that is not their customer base. Cisco at its core is a business and industrial systems provider. Twenty-somethings are not buying their product. Forty-somethings with large corporate budgets and critical infrastructure needs are buying. But yet, that audience is completely ignored. Instead, they hire a millennial idol like Peter Dinklage to wander aimlessly through a non-descript city spouting non-descript gibberish that has most professional, mature IT people scratching their heads wondering what they just saw. Cisco truly has no idea who their customers really are, and until they do, this downward spiral will continue.

Cisco is a leader in IoT. All cars, microwaves, fridges, TVs will run on Cisco IoT technology. Cisco will be like the new kid on the block.

You are forgetting about Microsft's push into cloud. They have been wildly successful with Azure and are one of very few companies that have seen the opportunity and been giving Amazon a run for their money.

They did all of that after realizing (after Cisco) that the cloud was the next great disruption. Difference is they succeed and we 'flame-out' almost immediately.

Cisco says they innovate. Horseshit. Cisco doesn't spend the billions of dollars it takes to do proper innovation on new technologies. Instead, they let others do their own research and then either purchase the company or lease the technology. Cisco will be screwed when something disruptive to networking is invented and they can't buy or lease it.

Nadella is considered by many to be the best CEO in all of the technology industry. Just recently he was smart enough to throw in the towel and admit defeat to Apple and Google and stop making Windows phones which many think is crazy in a time when so much is mobile. His response? No big deal. We can't compete so we'll find the next big area and rule that one. Cisco would still try to compete.

Microsoft will down within next 6-10 years, I don't think Nadela did improve Microsoft, if CEO different guy, would be the same.

Cisco doesn't know what to do , they just want to be first one in industry without seeing reality, they want to make investor happy. I can guess inside company like Cisco many political playing around , some people said that Cisco is Asian company .

Consumer market and Enterprise markets are different.

Although the Chinese know how to copy they do so without quality just look at garnet quadrants and you will see. It is useless to compare low end to high end equipment, remember linksys Cisco acquired it also because of the buzzing around, but again the target audience (Enterprise) has different requirements.

Focus on quality and delivery and you get enterprise clients. It is what got cisco its market share

Betting into buzzwords achieves nothing furthermore comparing Cisco to Amazon/Apple/Google its not the way since they are not comparable.

The fact that some ISPs are using cheap switches means nothing, cheap switches have existed since switches exist, its a matter of cost Vs Reliability and quality, there will be always those who prefer the 1st and ones who prefer the latter.