Bloomberg, citing what its reporters called “two people familiar with the plans,” says that Cisco (NASDAQ:CSCO) could cut as many as 10,000 jobs through a combination of layoffs and buy-out packages (see Bloomberg’s story). Such a move would reduce Cisco’s workforce by 14%.
According to Bloomberg’s reporting, as many as 7,000 jobs could disappear by next month. An additional 3,000 positions would be eliminated through buyouts of employees who have accepted early retirement offers.
Cisco would not confirm Bloomberg’s figures.
As reported earlier, Cisco Chairman and CEO John Chambers and COO Gary Moore announced in May at the company’s third quarter earnings call that Cisco would trim its employee roster in hopes of saving $1 billion (see “Cisco: Layoffs are coming”). Moore said that the layoffs would include both full- and part-time positions and be global in scope.
In addition to the layoffs, Chambers also has embarked on a restructuring of the company to focus on areas of greatest opportunity. They include:
- core routing, switching, and services
- collaboration
- data center virtualization and cloud
- video
- architectures for business transformation.
Therefore, it appears likely that many of the layoffs will come from activities outside of these areas, such as Cisco’s consumer operations.
Cisco is likely to reveal its workforce reduction plans during its fourth quarter fiscal 2011 earnings call. That quarter ends at the conclusion of this month, which would make the call sometime in August.
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