Part of CRs strategy for FY 19 and 20 will be to exit Cisco's Shelfware businesses. The strategy of giving customers shelfware, such as Spark and other collaboration products in order to sell high margin gear is no longer viable in the current sales environment. Expect to see massive divestures in most of collaboration, especially in products and services which cannot stand on their own.
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I'd guess that Cisco constitutes 80% of the Spark user base.
If you search the internet for Spark, Sparkboard, or any collaboration product which wasn't from an acquisition, you will find that they all have zero market buzz. When the spark board launched, litterly 100% of the internet content were paid marketing articles, it has zero organic marketing reach. That is strong evidence that no one has ever paid for these products, it is highly likely that 100% of the Spark users acquired the product for free as part of a larger deal and it is also highly likely that the even those who got the software free do not use it.
So anyone working on spark at RTP is getting layoff?
RT drove Collab into the ground with his utter lack of strategy and shoddy execution. All he did at Cisco was to prep himself for a CEO gig by building a wannabe Slack (sparky fail) and useless partnership announcement. Still here and sad to see the downfall of Cisco Collab.
The whole Collab BU should be shutdown. Sell off WebEx and CCBU like we did SPVSS
RT vision products will be thrown out, like RT himself. Amy will focus on data.
Webex running on a VM will survive and continue as cash cow; unless something free comes along with similar feature/function. Not sure how much else of the science experiment portfolio will be around in ten years
Any updates if the CCBU which is a part of Collaboration is also there in the exit ? I'm promised a promotion this year to grade 12.
Customers aren’t buying Sparkboards either. I see more emphasis on the Room (CES based) products now, and don’t hear a big push for Sparkboards anymore. Pretty much every Android multitouch based Cisco product (Cius, DX650, Sparkboard) is a bust. Would make sense they sweep away Spark into oblivion over the next 24 months. Can’t even give it away to customers. Any bets when Slack will be on Softraker?