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American tech giant Cisco to slash 5,500 jobs from its global workforce

Global tech giant Cisco Systems has announced it is to cut 5,500 jobs, representing almost 7% of its total global workforce, as it attempts to keep pace with an increasingly cloud-focused IT landscape.

The traditionally hardware-centric firm, which is based out of San Jose, California, announced the restructuring despite posting a 21% increase in net quarterly profits to $2.81bn.

Blaming a ‘challenging macro environment’, Cisco said the move was necessary to drive innovation and change at the business, which employs 7,000 people in the UK alone, as corporate clients adopt cloud computing and security at an ever greater rate.

As recently as November last year, the networking business reaffirmed its commitment to the UK, which is its second largest market, after opening a new 200-strong office in London’s Silicon Roundabout.

It is currently unclear whether any of the tech giant’s UK positions are to go, or whether its commitment to invest $150m in ‘Internet of Everything’ startups will be affected.

Founded in 1984, the firm is one of the foremost players in enterprise networking, providing routers and switches to big business and corporate clients, and is one of the highest profile survivors from the dotcom crash.

However, with the move away from hardware to software-based, cloud platforms Cisco has seemingly been left behind and is now planning to ‘aggressively’ refocus its business into tech growth areas such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and next generation data centers.

In a statement the firm said: “Today’s market requires Cisco and our customers to be decisive, move with greater speed and drive more innovation than we’ve seen in our history.

“Today, we announced a restructuring enabling us to optimize our cost base in lower growth areas of our portfolio and further invest in key priority areas such as security, IoT, collaboration, next generation data center and cloud.”

The statement went on to say that all cost savings would be reinvested back into the business and that the planned restructuring is to begin early next year.

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