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Cisco Systems revealed late Sept. 26 that it is trimming about 310 jobs at its sprawling San Jose, Calif. headquarters.
The company employs more than 73,000 employees worldwide, so the layoffs represent less than half of 1 percent of the entire head count.
Cisco, the world’s largest maker of networking hardware and software, is facing a lot of the same market issues as fellow old-school IT producers Oracle, IBM, Hewlett-Packard and others. The main problem is the industry’s move away from buying high-cost proprietary equipment to subscribing to cloud computing software and services.
HPE, for one other major player, has been cutting back its head count for several years. It announced Sept. 21 that another 5,000 employees would be losing their jobs during the next several months.
“Cisco regularly evaluates its business and will always make the changes necessary to effectively manage our portfolio and drive the most value for our customers and shareholders,” the company said in a media advisory.
“As a result, this can mean realigning some areas so that we can invest in others such as security, data center/cloud and networking.”
Cisco, knowing for years that it has to expand into other markets, has delved into intelligent networking, security and UCS (unified computing systems) data center servers in recent years while its bread-and-butter networking franchise has leveled off in growth.