Massive job cuts at Cisco
Cisco wants to shrink itself back to health with further job cuts. The networking giant is also moving away from its core market and towards AI.
(Image: Michael Vi/Shutterstock.com)
- Benjamin Pfister
It has been clear since mid-August that there would be a second wave of redundancies at Cisco in 2024. However, the company has only now announced its restructuring plan, which will affect around seven percent of the workforce worldwide. In concrete figures, this means around 6000 employees.
Background to the job cuts
Cisco's core market of routers and switches has been weakening for some time. This is evident in both the campus and data center environment. In addition, the takeover of Juniper by HPE has created an additional major competitor in this market alongside Cisco and the data center specialist Arista. As part of an initial restructuring, Cisco therefore only laid off around 4,000 employees in February 2024.
Cisco wants to focus on AI, cloud and cyber security as new growth areas. This was already clearly evident at the Cisco Live in-house exhibition in Las Vegas in June, where the topic of AI was omnipresent. A cooperation with Nvidia for "turnkey AI clusters" called Nexus HyperFabric AI Cluster is therefore intended to lay the foundation for AI in the company's own data center. Cisco also wants to use a billion-euro fund to promote AI start-ups and bind them to the company.
According to Cisco, the restructuring has already begun, but the timing of the implementation depends on the local laws and regulations in the respective countries of the employees affected. Cisco's statement on the new restructuring plan is available to the iX editorial team as an e-mail.
(emw)