To some extent, I can understand why Cisco opts for acquisitions rather than developing its own innovative products. Leadership thinks it's more cost-effective. What I don't understand is why these acquisitions are so bad. They are realizing some acquisitions that shouldn’t even be considered.
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Chicken and egg problem.
You can’t innovate your way out using in-house developers once you’ve laid off 50% of the innovators and burn out the remaining 50% in temporary stock boosting cut cutting labor reductions.
At that point all you can do is attempt to buy and rebrand innovation using the money you saved by laying off and overworking the innovators.
WebEx was an amazing acquisition. Although we sidelined the WebEx executives, and mismanaged the product for 10 years. The people Cisco pushed out went on to create Zoom.
Cisco M&A strategy has one of the worst track records in tech (other than HPE). Look at Salesforce, HUGE acquisitions like Slack, Tableau, Mulesoft....all of those businesses are booming and compliment their narrative well. Cisco's acquisitions more closely resemble a quilt with various mis-matching patches. Yikes.
How's that Slido integration going?
After acquired leadership teams see the dysfunction inside Cisco, they just bide their time until their golden handcuffs come off. They sprint out the door as fast as possible.
Because good companies refuse to be acquired by us. So we go for the D team startups, it’s all we can get.
More money than brains.
Cisco is too broken internally to innovate any new good products. This is only done via acquisition now.