The 25,000-person organization is reorganizing, part of a fundamental shift in industry technology.

Mitch Wagner, Executive Editor, Light Reading

November 5, 2014

2 Min Read
Big Changes at Cisco's Engineering Org

The networking industry is a different place from when Cisco initially built its business. Tracking those changes, Cisco is making fundamental changes to its engineering organization.

Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO) is reorganizing its 25,000-person engineering staff to "bust silos," says Pankaj Patel, Cisco EVP and chief development officer. The goal is to improve collaboration across product lines and the whole company and focus on the new technologies that are the future of networking: cloud; data center; SDN; virtualization; security; mobility; and the Internet of Things (which Cisco calls the "Internet of Everything").

Cisco is focusing its engineering team in two neat groups, for hardware and software. Cisco is also unifying its central cloud orchestration, virtualization, and SDN groups -- formerly eight separate operations -- under a single leader; with additional groups focused on collaboration, security, service provider mobility, and more.

On top of the pyramid will be segment leads, one focused on service providers and the other on the enterprise.

Find out more about business transformation on Light Reading's business transformation channel.

It's a "once in a generation" reorganization, says Patel, and it comes at a time when Cisco is facing the kinds of difficulties it's not used to, including year-over-year revenue decline and four consecutive years of layoffs.

To find out more about what Cisco is doing and why, read our Prime Reading feature, Troubled Cisco Looks to 'Bust Silos' .

— Mitch Wagner, Circle me on Google+ Follow me on TwitterVisit my LinkedIn profileFollow me on Facebook, West Coast Bureau Chief, Light Reading. Got a tip about SDN or NFV? Send it to [email protected].

About the Author(s)

Mitch Wagner

Executive Editor, Light Reading

San Diego-based Mitch Wagner is many things. As well as being "our guy" on the West Coast (of the US, not Scotland, or anywhere else with indifferent meteorological conditions), he's a husband (to his wife), dissatisfied Democrat, American (so he could be President some day), nonobservant Jew, and science fiction fan. Not necessarily in that order.

He's also one half of a special duo, along with Minnie, who is the co-habitor of the West Coast Bureau and Light Reading's primary chewer of sticks, though she is not the only one on the team who regularly munches on bark.

Wagner, whose previous positions include Editor-in-Chief at Internet Evolution and Executive Editor at InformationWeek, will be responsible for tracking and reporting on developments in Silicon Valley and other US West Coast hotspots of communications technology innovation.

Beats: Software-defined networking (SDN), network functions virtualization (NFV), IP networking, and colored foods (such as 'green rice').

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