All Eyes On Cisco 

The biggest news for Cisco Systems in 2022 didn’t involve product announcements or acquisitions. This year, it was all about executive moves, supply chain challenges, and the company trending toward everything as a service (XaaS) and away from hardware. August proved to be a busy month for the tech giant, who saw one of its top executives, Todd Nightingale, then- senior vice president and general manager of Cisco’s Enterprise Networking and Cloud Business, leave to take on the role of CEO at Fastly. Also in August, the company saw triple-digit growth in its then record-smashing backlog that was increased thanks to supply chain constraints and component shortages. In the same month, Cisco CEO Cuck Robbins reportedly announced internally that the company would increase operating expenses by $1 billion over the next 12 months, in part to raise salaries to stave off employee departures.

There was a noticeable lack of acquisitions in 2022, aside from privately held enterprise software company Opsani in January. The company the following month was rumored to be ready to drop more than $20 billion for Splunk; a deal that never made it to fruition. What did pan out for the San Jose, California-based networking behemoth was significant growth in SMB, which has now been crowned as the fastest-growing segment for Cisco, a company historically thought of as an enterprise player first.

Cisco wasn’t immune to layoffs this year. As the tech industry collectively recalibrates to factor in changes in business IT spending and hybrid work, Cisco in November made news when it announced it would be restructuring in a way that would include layoffs across various business segments and reducing some of its larger campuses and real estate as many employees opt to work from home.

From layoffs and executive departures, to supply chain challenges and new business strategies getting off the ground, here are the 10 biggest Cisco news stories of the year.