{"id":23291,"date":"2023-11-01T12:30:03","date_gmt":"2023-11-01T20:30:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2023\/11\/01\/news-17021\/"},"modified":"2023-11-01T12:30:03","modified_gmt":"2023-11-01T20:30:03","slug":"news-17021","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2023\/11\/01\/news-17021\/","title":{"rendered":"Splunk cuts 7% of workforce ahead of Cisco acquisition"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Network management and visualization vendor Splunk, which is set to be acquired by Cisco in a $28 billion deal<\/a>, will cut about 560 jobs in a global restructuring, the company announced Wednesday in an SEC filing.<\/p>\n

Splunk president and CEO Gary Steele said in the filing that employees in the Americas set to lose their jobs will be notified throughout today, and that the company plans to offer severance packages to laid-off employees, as well as healthcare coverage and job placement assistance for an undisclosed length of time.<\/p>\n

The announcement comes after Splunk announced a first wave of 325 job cuts<\/a> in February.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe overall market has retracted and we expect the macro environment will continue to be unpredictable for the foreseeable future,\u201d Steele\u2019s message to employees said.<\/p>\n

The cuts amount to 7% of Splunk\u2019s global workforce, according to Steele\u2019s filing, and are unrelated to the company\u2019s pending acquisition by networking giant Cisco, which was initially announced in September of this year. (Splunk employed roughly 8,000 people globally as of early 2023, according to Macrotrends, which represents an increase of more than 14% from its 2022 totals.)<\/p>\n

\u201cThe changes we are announcing are not a result of our agreement with Cisco; they are the continuation of the important initiatives we\u2019ve undertaken across Splunk for more than a year to align our resources and operating structure to deliver ongoing and incremental value for our customers,\u201d Steele said.<\/p>\n

Though technology companies announced massive layoffs\u00a0last year, 2023 has been\u00a0 much worse.<\/a> Tech suppliers went on a hiring binge during the pandemic when lockdowns sparked a tech buying spree to support remote work, only to face revenue declines as COVID cases subsided.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile Splunk\u2019s $28 billion price tag for the Cisco acquisiton reflects the value placed on the company\u2019s observability products, which are central for the type of network traffic monitoring required for the modern threat environment. Those capabilities will complement Cisco\u2019s already extensive network security portfolio, and integrate with the larger company\u2019s existing XDR and Security Cloud platforms.<\/p>\n

Cisco said that, when both companies\u2019 products are combined, it will be able to offer what it called \u201cfull stack observability,\u201d providing end-to-end visibility into network traffic moving on a user\u2019s systems.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s partially due to complementary but not overlapping nature of the two companies\u2019 offerings, Cisco chair and CEO Chuck Robbins told Network World in September.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don’t think we have significant overlap,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I think we have if you think about the data platform and the observability progress that [Splunk] has made, and you couple that with our application visibility with ThousandEyes we think we can actually extend well.\u201d<\/p>\n

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