Cisco is reportedly planning a restructuring that will involve layoffs affecting “thousands” of employees.

First reported by Reuters, which cited three sources close to the matter, Cisco intends to refocus on high-growth areas.

Reuters suggested the official announcement could come this week, with the tech giant’s earnings call scheduled for this Wednesday, February 14. However, a Reuters source said the company had not yet agreed upon the number of employees to be impacted.

Cisco had declined to comment to Reuters on the subject.

Cisco’s Restructuring in Recent Years

A restructuring in November 2022 saw Cisco cut five percent of its jobs from its 80,000+ strong workforce.

Roughly four thousand workers lost their positions in a “rebalancing” shake-up that encompassed office space sell-offs, employee reshuffles and rejuvenated targeting of security and networking.

In January, that restructuring continued when Cisco announced it was laying off nearly 700 more staff.

July 2023 saw Cisco engage in a series of layoffs that included Webex. The specific business affected involved Webex, Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure, Cisco Collaboration, Cisco Cisco Data Center Services & Solutions, Cisco Experience Centers (CxC), Cisco Security Business Group (SBG) and Cisco Servers – Unified Computing System (UCS).

Cisco told Fierce Telecom that this round of layoffs was the next stage of the “rebalancing effort” announced in November. “This is not about cost savings as we have roughly the same number of employees as we did before the process began,” Cisco’s official comment said. “This rebalancing is about prioritizing investments in our transformation to meet and exceed our customers’ expectations in the changing technology landscape.”

In its most recent earnings call in November 2023, Cisco lowered its full-year revenue and profit projections, signalling a slowdown in demand for its networking equipment — news which saw its share price fall 11 percent.

While Cisco celebrated that its collaboration sales had grown for the first time in a year in that call, it had bucked the trend of four successive quarters of declining collaboration sales.

A Difficult Start To The Year For Tech Workforces

It’s been a challenging year for layoffs in the tech space so far.

Google has already let 1,000 employees go, while The Verge reported last month that Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai told staff to expect further layoffs as 2024 progresses. Microsoft let go 1,900 workers from its gaming branches at the end of January, while Amazon began the month announcing it would cut 18,000 jobs from across its businesses.

Zoom made a round of layoffs earlier this month but said it has not paused hiring as it continues to build out new tech. First reported by Bloomberg, Zoom confirmed that cuts impacted two percent of its workforce, fewer workers than its more extensive cull last February.

Dell also reportedly engaged in layoffs at the start of February, but no concrete numbers were outlined. In North America, most workers who were allegedly fired were marketing and non-sales staff, while sales staff were expected to take a hit last week. According to The Register, 15 percent of Netherlands-based staff were laid off, while there’s a voluntary programme in France for workers with ten or more years with the company to leave.

The Wall Street Journal also reported that Salesforce was set to lay off 700 staff at the end of January, which comprised around one percent of its global staff. That followed Salesforce laying off over 10 percent of its workforce in 2023.

Cisco Live 2024

The news of Cisco layoffs and the upcoming earnings call follows Cisco Live Amsterdam last week.

At the event, Cisco launched a Webex app for the Apple Vision Pro.

The Webex app is now available on the App Store for visionOS, with Jeetu Patel, Cisco’s Executive Vice President and General Manager of Security and Collaboration, describing the device as “one of the most consequential devices of our times” during Cisco Live’s keynote.

It allows users to engage in immersive meetings through Apple’s spatial computing device. Webex joined Microsoft Teams and Zoom as part of the Vision Pro’s app library upon its launch last Friday, February 2.

Also, at Cisco Live, the vendor unveiled a “first-of-its-kind” Identity Intelligence solution which resides within the Cisco Security Cloud and is complemented by several new AI-powered security capabilities. At the same time, the business announced a swathe of AI Assistant features had become generally available for Webex Suite and Contact Center customers. The features include automatic meeting and vidcast summaries and automatic translation.



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