Cisco is planning to fire 7000 workers by the end of August, with an additional 3000 taking voluntary resignation according to Bloomberg News.
The massive cuts – representing around 14% of the firm’s entire workforce – follow Cisco’s catastrophic quarterly earnings, which saw the firm’s sales sink to new lows.
A couple of months ago, the networking giant dumped the Flip camera division, which it had bought for $590 million two years back, but now even core enterprise divisions look to be on the chopping block due to aggressive competition from rivals such as Juniper and HP.
Once a veritable heavyweight in the silicon valley tech scene, Cisco has seen its luck change dramatically of late, with some speculation it may even become an acquisition target.
Cisco purportedly believes the cuts will spur new earnings growth, though many in the industry are expressing doubts over CEO John Chambers’ long term strategy, with rumors he too could be leaving the company shortly.