Cisco reshuffles divisions to fend off competition

Networking giant brings datacentre and enterprise divisions together, and expands cloud unit

Cisco has announced a reshuffling of its business units to "strongly position the company against [its] competitors", an internal memo has revealed.

The changes, first reported by The Information, will see Cisco combine its enterprise and datacentre networking units, and form a new cloud division that will house cloud platforms, cloud solutions and the vendor's compute technology.

All hardware developed for enterprise networking, cloud and computing will be moved to Cisco's Core Hardware Group.

The combined networking unit will be led by SVP Scott Harrell; the cloud division will be headed up by Liz Centoni; and the hardware unit will be led by Ravikrishna Cherukuri.

The memo was sent by Cisco's executive vice president David Goeckeler and published in full by Business Insider.

In the note, Goeckeler said the reshuffle is to position Cisco for a fight against competitors.

"While I know these updates may seem like a significant change, it's important to understand that this alignment will create new opportunities for driving synergies across domains and will strongly position the company against our competitors," he said to employees.

Cisco confirmed that the contents of the leaked memo are true in a statement, saying:

"To continue the great progress already made, we are making some organisational updates to our networking and security business.

"These changes will better align our development process with our customers' needs as they transition to a multi-domain approach."