Early in a conference call with analysts Wednesday evening to discuss Cisco’s latest earnings, Cisco Chairman and CEO John Chambers disclosed that a “limited restructuring” – i.e. layoffs – was underway at the tech giant.
He later used words such as “disrupt,” “courage to change,” and “transformative period.”
In his own words, here’s how Chambers described later in the call why Cisco is cutting some 6,000 jobs:
“If we do not disrupt ourselves, if we don’t have the courage to change, if we don’t need the change, we’ll get left behind. Disruption is happening amongst our peers and throughout our customer base. Management teams are being tested every day. The question is whether they will make the right investments and take the bold actions in order to move forward.
“At Cisco, we are making these tough choices, transforming our company at a rapid pace, whether it is introducing revolutionary new platforms in our core and at a speed where we knowingly disrupt ourselves we’re making long-term bets like we did with UCS and Internet of everything and are now doing with InterCloud and ACI application-centric infrastructure. We are investing in our leadership for years to come.
“We understand that the results of our strategy and many of the decisions we make may not be evident in a single quarter and in fact at times we’ll create volatility through our results from time-to-time. We also know that some of the investments we are making today would take several years to pay off.
“Taking a multi-year view, I’m confident that when we look back in time, this transformative period will be a distinguished part of Cisco’s history, where we made both choices, moved aggressively and ensured our long-term strategic value for our customers, shareholders, partners and employees.”
Financial news site SeekingAlpha provided the transcript, which can be read in full online.
Cisco operates its second largest corporate campus in RTP and recently announced plans to add 550 jobs.
