Cisco to Cut 4,000 Jobs, Blames Weak Economic Recovery

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Don Clark, at The Wall Street Journal writes:

Cisco Systems Inc. CSCO +0.21% said it would cut 4,000 jobs, or 5% of its workforce, despite reporting an 18% jump in profit in the fourth fiscal quarter. John Chambers, chief executive of the big Silicon Valley technology company, blamed the decision largely on a disappointing economic recovery that is affecting particular countries and product lines in different ways. Oh? It couldn't possibly be because the quality of Cisco's hardware has been in steady decline over the past decade as their customer service has also declined yet their prices have continued to be the highest among all of their competitors. Nope. Couldn't possibly be that.

Why A One-Room West Virginia Library Runs a $20,000 Cisco Router

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Nate Anderson, at Ars Technica writes:

In total, $24 million was spent on the routers through a not-very-open bidding process under which non-Cisco router manufacturers such as Juniper and Alcatel-Lucent were not "given notice or any opportunity to bid." As for Cisco, which helped put the massive package together, the legislative auditor concluded that the company "had a moral responsibility to propose a plan which reasonably complied with Cisco's own engineering standards" but that instead "Cisco representatives showed a wanton indifference to the interests of the public in recommending using $24 million of public funds to purchase 1,164 Cisco model 3945 branch routers." After having dealt with Cisco personally at my current job, this doesn't surprise me.