GSSO No More Specialists

It looks like GSSO is accelerating their demise. Apparently, they are taking us and making us front line CSS / TSA for the entire security portfolio. Making everyone a security generalist for the entire portfolio is a disastrous direction. The security competitors do not operate this way and they are growing double digits. The security competitors have specialist teams to go deep. Again, the security competitors are growing double digits while we are growing 2%. GSSO will turn into negative growth very quickly with this direction resulting in layoffs. It will be primarily us that will be laid off since we don’t know the entire portfolio. We will not get a fair chance. Our specialists leaders will not get a chance.

Why doesn’t Cisco just get rid of all the Specialist teams such as Collab, CISG, etc and make them AMs and SAs on the front lines selling everything from Cisco. It would be a disaster and everyone knows it.

There will be no specialists for Secure Access or XDR. These were just announced recently and they will be a bust as no one will know how to sell them and go deep on them.

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@5hdy+1nOCz8Ju I work in the Security org and not sure who these initials could be…I bet they do a mean PowerPoint and can talk for hours about nothing in particular and have a clueless manager who thinks because they do a mean PPT and can speak for hours(but don’t understand what they’re on about) they are amazing, so haven’t appeared on the LR list (yet). Big LR coming in the next six months, so you might get your wish.

If cisco wants to be serious about security they need to get rid of dinosaurs who think they are the smartest person in the room. They are preventing progress and provide zero value. Looking at you JH and JF.

They announced it weeks or months ago at this point.

When are they announcing this? Next week?

Security is a tiny source of revenue for Cisco. We only stay in the business to make Wall Street think we have some relevance. It does not make sense to be throwing so much money at it.

Meanwhile Data Center is going the opposite way. They are increasing specialization.

The “entire security portfolio” is still tiny. This actually is how other security company’s operate. It’s not like there aren’t TMEs still, etc. And TSAs will be in specialized pools in C2E, so don’t worry, you can still just have a TSA do everting while you wack off and make $$$ for nothing.

I left the Security organisation recently mainly because the Security portfolio at Cisco isn’t well respected.
ISE is good but reached its ceiling.
Umbrella and Duo good but other products out there that do as good a job, so quite saturated.
Web and email OK but niche, similar for Kenna. The real nail in the coffin though are the FPRs cross your fingers and all your toes when you do anything with them.

They want to follow the Meraki model which is that specialist cover a portfolio of products in this case the Meraki sellers sell: firewalls, SDWAN, switching, wireless, cameras, sensors, and MDM.

Growth is off the charts there and they do it with way less people than security.

What the real problem is that our portfolio is too vast and too complicated. Palo is growing because they focused on providing a few great products namely their firewall and then expand from there. We don’t really have any best of breed anything in security compared to our competitors.

So all Security TSAs will be “generalists” and cover the whole portfolio?

What about hyper specialists? Same?

Thread regarding Cisco Systems Inc. layoffs

GSSO No More Specialists

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