With all the cost cutting, lack of innovation, and hurting sales is Cisco headed down the path of Nortel? The politics of the company seem to be shaping a palpable lack of trust, with decisions taken out of concern for power bases. Also, Cisco seems to be botching acquisitions, and excelling only at developing packages for staff to leave. I wonder if the acquisitions made over the past couple of years meet the business case developed to justify the takeover.
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Cisco is the next IBM, Oracle or any other number one player in a field where they can strangle up and comers. If a world of IP based networks is suddenly replaced by something Cisco can’t acquire they’re toast but that’s not an immediate risk.
Without that choking risk some of the low end players might be more aggressive about moving upscale but even then how long would it take a Netgear to get customers to buy in to a 100+Tb/s router from a functionality, configurability and support perspective?
Read the book "100 Days: The Rush to Judgement that K–led Nortel" by James Bagnall.
Nortel's board of directors got worried that they had the next Enron or Worldcom on their hands.
When Nortel returned to profitability and CEO Frank Dunn met the numbers to trigger a big bonus the board became alarmed (especially Red Wilson).
The Board hired WilmerHale, a big New York firm, to investigate. The head investigator was a real B. First thing she asked Frank Dunn was "where are the real books". She accused Dunn of cooking the books. The Board fired Dunn and Nortel stock tanked. It never recovered after that.
Frank Dunn was cleared of all wrongdoing in the court case in Canada. The Board should have never fired him. The next two CEO's after him were disasters (especially Mike Zafirovski of GE lineage).
Yes
Wow, I was only 6 years old in 1999, what happened to Nortel?
Not yet. It’s still strong. But dumb decisions over the past 6-10 years are going to suddenly turn up in the windshield. Maybe another couple of years, then look out.
I think so, Cisco has lost its focus on tech and making it stable. Instead its all about dropping its shorts to make a sale. I work in sales and well thats what I see. Not sure how much longer Cisco can keep up with the yearly layoffs AKA Hunger Games and appear as a place anyone would want to work for more then 2 to 3 years before leaving. Based on the Cisco checkins there seems to be more in denial about whats going on then those that see where this ship is headed.
A personal story from my Nortel experience.
Nortel had a small layoff in end of 1999, targetting the legacy group (the digital telephone switch group). At that time the people impacted were actually happy, some even celebrated for the money they got at sport bars local heros, don cherry, local star(anyone from ottawa remember them!!!), because they knew they have no problem to get another job in the red hot job market and they were right.
As everyone knows, Nortel never recovered from the dot com bubble, as more and more layoffs, the package got smaller and smaller so people were talking. When Nortel was about to be belly up. more and more negative message showed up, people were saying "what could have done, should have done to have saved the company, and blah blah blah"
is this what is going to happen to cisco?
100% without any doubt
Of course, it is. The company has more beancounters than engineers. It’s a lost cause.