Cisco loses 1,300 jobs in another round of cost-cutting

Cisco Systems is to cut around 1,300 jobs or 2% of its workforce in continued efforts to cut costs and streamline decision making.

The company said in a statement: "We routinely review our business to determine where we need to align investment based on growth opportunities.

"Additionally, we continue to evaluate our organisational structure as part of our plan to drive simplicity, speed of decisions and agility across Cisco."

This is the second round of job cuts by the networking firm in as many years. In 2011,Cisco cut around 6,500 jobs or 9% of its workforce to help trim $1bn in annual costs and boost profit.  

Earlier in 2011, Cisco announced plans for a company shake-up to refocus on its core markets in routers and switching, collaboration, datacentre virtualisation and video.

Shortly after, the company closed down its Flip video camera business, confirming that its consumer division was a top target in the planned company revamp.

The company has been under pressure for several years, owing to the worldwide economic slowdown and pricing pressure on networking gear, according to the New York Times.

However, Cisco remains a large company, with both technical capabilities and a highly aggressive sales force, the paper said.

In April, Cisco announced it was financing, with $100m, its own networking start-up, called Inseimi.

Industry commentators said the investment was aimed at giving more relevance to Cisco gear in the world of virtualised networks.