Cisco, according to CRN, is about to make as many as 14,000 employees redundant, representing almost 20% of the company’s global workforce. The move would be made due to sluggish sales of switches and routers, Cisco’s main business. Sources told the website that the cuts will be announced ‘within the next few weeks’.
The day after CRN broke the news, Cisco announced that it would be cutting 5,500 jobs as part of a major restructuring effort, to invest in priority areas such as security and the IoT (a Cisco spokesperson said that this was “the real figure” to CRN, but would not comment on whether any additional cuts were planned). Costs saved from the reorganisation will be channeled back into these areas. The cuts will begin in the first quarter of Cisco’s current financial year.
