Thread regarding Cisco Systems Inc. layoffs

Sadly, numerous other former NDS Israeli's have been let go and there seems to be no let up in Cisco's regional LRs. I was told (although I can't confirm from here) that the entire research team and many in the security team are getting LR's (again). Sad

Irrespective of which side you take on the arguments of blame, these are surely tales for the MISFORTUNE 500.

To summarize, so we are all on the same page, Cisco is a simple networking hardware company and it is struggling with software, cloud platforms and innovation. It doesn't matter if acquired companies are mature, growing or start-ups, Cisco process crushes them all. Cisco has plenty of cash and a large declining legacy business so will continue to pay the leadership team and acquire companies. Just consider some examples and ask what happened ...

Piston Cloud Computing

Metacloud

Sourcefire

Ubiquisys

Intucell

ClearAccess

Jabber Inc

1 Mainstream

BNI Video

Inlet Technologies

Arroyo Video

OpenDNS

NDS was a huge mistake. It makes a lot of sense to sell and buy a video startup or some video company who can handle the ott play and mobile video.

To summarize, so we are all on the same page, NDS AND SA were ripe smelling and past their prime when the Cisco bought them.....at hyper inflated prices. Time for both to go. Bye bye.

I agree that SA and NDS were built and started in a different but like all businesses they were changing with the times. I have been around long enough to see this by the way. But it was clean that Cisco had not idea what to do with Video so they just let it die a slow deaf. Cisco will be just like IBM in the future, nothing but a service company in the end, if they last.

Cisco managers used to trot out a car analogy. You walk into the Cisco showroom, there is the car for sale. It's red, gas guzzling, expensive and there are no options.

You walk into the old NDS showroom, there is an engine. You ask where the car is, and the NDS salesman claps his hands and says "how would you like it to look?".

There's the difference right there. NDS would build/adapt something in front of you that fitted your business - and sometimes get it right. Cisco wanted to repeat sales from "off the shelf" without any extra NRE to adapt it - reflecting the sales only skew of the business.

Cisco management never understood this business. Small customers weren't denied by NDS. Simple change requests from customers weren't denied by NDS. Cisco wants a have product & sell product as it to customer. Cisco never understood that NO customer will accept Cisco's product without any customization.

@QbrsM7C-cea, you may be right that some ex-SA people will remain in Cisco after a sale of ex-NDS. But not for long. If Cisco's strategy is to move out of video, why would it keep Lawrenceville?

@QbrsM7C-cea, SA is better than NDS. NDS is completely worthless. NDS engineers can't even tie SA engineers shoelaces. Cisco will get rid of all NDS before SA employees. Cisco keep lawrenville forever...

Indeed it's easy to bash NDS. Let us know forget that SA was a disaster as well and anybody left behind should have been LR'ed years ago. Top to bottom Larenceville are absolutely useless.

If you subscribe to the view that NDS was about to fail, then surely Cisco made a tiny little mistake in agreeing to a $5bn valuation. NDS had survived and grown profitably through a number of transitions in its >20 year history and was developing new technologies to handle the evolution. It had healthy ongoing revenues from existing customers and several new projects with customers that were moving its capability forward until Cisco axed these projects. Cisco could have done a better job in understanding the business before and after the acquisition, and fostered the evolution instead of a rather misplaced bet on moving legacy capability to the cloud, which burned up engineering resource without delivering anything of interest to the market.

LR'ing many of the senior managers and technology experts could be seen as brilliant cost-saving, or perhaps it was accidentally throwing away the value of the acquisition.

How about failing business anyway? NDS would crater with or without Cisco given how video, content, etc is evolving, becoming more open and cost effective. NDS and SA were built for a different time.