Cisco Systems confirmed Wednesday that it has begun a reorganization that stems from the company’s announcement in mid-August that it would cut 6,000 more jobs, or about 8% of its global workforce.
Cisco labeled it as a “limited restructuring across several segments of our business,” but Business Insider reported that it’s large scale, affecting up to 25,000 employees, and enabling as shift from relatively small teams focused on specific products to two big teams – one focused on software, and the other on hardware. Top managers with the “general manager” title will go away, though execs under them, including those with vice president and senior vice president, “are not being particularly targeted,” BI added.
Cisco has yet to announce anything so specific.
“Technology disruption has never moved more quickly, requiring all companies to adapt and accelerate through change,” a Cisco spokesman said in a statement. “We are taking action now to build for the future of cloud, security, virtualization, analytics, data center, IoE [Internet of Everything] and collaboration. We will continue to invest in growth, innovation, and talent, while managing costs and improving efficiencies across our business. We are continuing to hire, especially in the areas that help our customers solve their biggest business problems.”
As for Cisco’s base of about 25,000 employees in its development organization, “many – but not all-- have new reporting lines as part of our overall effort to align our business to priority areas,” the official added.
Cisco also told BI that the company is also bringing sales and engineering teams closer together by implementing a DevOps and an Agile development model, which aims to speed product development and is also becoming a big focus for the cable industry.
It was not immediately clear how the reorg will affect Cisco’s service provider division. Earlier this year, former Cablevision Systems and SeaChange International exec Yvette Kanouff joined Cisco to head up its Service Provider Video Software and Solutions (SPVSS) organization.
According to his current bio, Joe Cozzolino now serves as senior vice president, general manager of Cisco’s Service Provider Video Infrastructure Group, tasked with heading up the strategy and development of Cisco’s video hardware portfolio, including cable modems, video gateways, set-tops and video infrastructure hardware such as encoders/decoders.
Update: Cisco provided more details on engineering leadership changes that were announced internally in May:
-Kelly Ahuja is senior VP and GM of Cisco's Service Provider segment;
-Yvette Kanouff heads up service provider software and services;
-Joe Cozzolino heads up service provider infrastructure and service provider mobility; and
-Venod Peris leads Cisco's routing and optical software group.
