Cisco laying off 6,500 employees

[rpm]

Cisco laying off 6,500 employees (http://mybroadband.co.za/news/business/29438-cisco-laying-off-6500-employees.html)

Networking equipment maker Cisco Systems Inc. is laying off 6,500 employees – about 9 percent of its work force – as it follows up on a plan announced in May to eliminate thousands of jobs in an effort to cut costs and raise profits.

[foX2delta]

Ouch

[msamito]

Ya ne, that is sad news.

[cjimme]

Ouch

My thoughts exactly :). I wonder if Chinese companies like Huawei and ZTE are putting pressure on Cisco or if it's just the generally economic recession hurting them?

[Devill]

Eish. Well in the current economy this was not the first and wont be the last where companies are laying off employees. :(

[bekdik]

Interesting, considering in Cisco's expansion into the cloud market

[lilors]

who is their main competition and making things hot for them?

[snobee]

I wonder what type of early retirement packages will be available for their higher position staff being let off... will they be enough to retire on happily. It can't be a fun time while you wait so long for an answer. This type of news negatively effects your work, and I wouldn't be surprised if overal efficiency and job satisfaction was at an all time low during the uncertainty of the past few weeks. People also start looking for other work, and this also means staff are not doing the job they are supposed to be doing.

[ThinkCentre]

My thoughts exactly :). I wonder if Chinese companies like Huawei and ZTE are putting pressure on Cisco or if it's just the generally economic recession hurting them?

Huawei might be waiting to catch these people!

[nivek]

who is their main competition and making things hot for them?

I think the HP/3com partnership might grow into a bit of a challenge for cisco
There really isnt a reason to buy over priced cisco equipment anymore

[TheGuy]

I think the HP/3com partnership might grow into a bit of a challenge for cisco
There really isnt a reason to buy over priced cisco equipment anymore

Appart from IOS that is.

[nivek]

Appart from IOS that is.

yea
people can learn a few new commands tho ;)
compatibility isn't a problem

[Brawler]

feck

[Deckert]

There really isnt a reason to buy over priced cisco equipment anymore

Agreed.

Cisco makes excellent kit, but they consistently overprice their gear. Alcatel, Huawei (and a little of Juniper) has been gaining plenty of market share from Cisco and companies like the little-known SMC make really neat LAN switching kit that performs as well at a fraction of the cost with (in my experience) the same reliability.

Even HP's pro-curve line, which is still a tad expensive, is substantially cheaper than Cisco at exactly the same spec and reliability points. Only Juniper, HP, Alcatel and Huawei can really compete with Cisco at the high-end of the market, but that segment is relatively small (albeit expensive).

So yes, get your CCIx qualification, but don't get behind on other vendor technologies. Learn the basics - the rest is just semantics - and you'll be well on your way to be a good a network engineer, not just a good Cisco engineer.

--deckert

[noxibox]

Perhaps they are another company that had a lock on certain markets and didn't adjust quickly enough or it could be that this is what they need to do to sell their equipment at more reasonable prices. I wonder how much failed products, things into which development money went, but no commercial product ever emerged, have cost Cisco?

[leelo]

6500 Employees is only 9% of it's workforce?? Holy cow udders - there really must have been a lot of workforce FAT

[noxibox]

6500 Employees is only 9% of it's workforce?? Holy cow udders - there really must have been a lot of workforce FAT
Not necessarily. These might also be people that were working on in-house projects where Cisco is now partnering or simply buying off the shelf.

[Dolby]

I'm sure when I was there in 2006 the world wide work force was 35,000 ... So nearly doubling in 5 years could be one of their mistakes with regards to profitability?