Optus's $20m Wi-Fi project; Microsoft open sources PowerShell; Cisco cuts 5500 jobs

Cisco will cut up to 5500 positions from its workforce as part of a restructuring plan announced last week.

The company said the cuts represent about 7% of its global workforce which, at the end of 30 July 2016, sat at 73,711.

The restructuring plan was revealed during the announcement of the company’s fourth quarter and fiscal year results for the period ending 30 July 2016.

Cisco said the restructuring plan will enable it to “optimise our cost base in lower growth areas of our portfolio and further invest in key priority areas such as security, IoT, collaboration, next-generation data centres and cloud”.

The company said it will begin taking action under the restructuring plan in the first quarter of fiscal year 2017.

Also in the results announcement, Cisco reported GAAP net income of US$2.8 billion for Q4 of fiscal year 2016.

Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins said: “We had another strong quarter, wrapping up a great year. I am particularly pleased with our performance in priority areas including security, data centre switching, collaboration, services as well as our overall performance, with revenues up 2% in Q4 excluding the SP Video CPE business.”

“We continue to execute well in a challenging macro environment. Despite slowing in our Service Provider business and Emerging Markets after three consecutive quarters of growth, the balance of the business was healthy with 5% order growth.”

Open source PowerShell

Microsoft has open sourced PowerShell, and made it available on Linux.

Jeffrey Snover, Technical Fellow, Microsoft Enterprise Cloud Group, announced the changes in an official Microsoft blog post.

“In the past, Microsoft’s business focus meant that .NET, and thus PowerShell, were only available on Windows. But this is a new Microsoft. [Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s] leadership and Azure have shifted us to a more open, customer-centric, mindset,” Snover wrote.

“Microsoft wants to earn customers’ preference as the platform for running all their workloads — Linux as well as Windows. This new thinking empowered the .NET team to port .NET Core to Linux and that, in turn, enabled PowerShell to port to Linux as well. PowerShell on Linux is now designed to enable customers to use the same tools, and the same people, to manage everything from anywhere,” he said.

Snover said PowerShell on Linux is initially available on Ubuntu, Centos and Red Hat, and also runs on Mac OS X, with more platforms to be added in the future.

He said the initial release is an alpha, and is community supported. “In the future, we will deliver an official Microsoft released version of PowerShell based on open source to anyone running a supported version of Windows or *nix. The timing of the official Microsoft version will be based upon community input and business needs.”

$20 million Wi-Fi deployment

Optus Business has revealed a $20 million project that will see the company roll out free public Wi-Fi across 81 Vicinity Centres shopping centres across Australia.

Vicinity Centres’ shopping centre portfolio includes Emporium Melbourne, Chatswood Chase Sydney, QueensPlaza in Brisbane and Galleria in Perth.

Optus will also roll out high-speed Wi-Fi services across six key Vicinity corporate sites as part of the five-year deal.

John Paitaridis, managing director at Optus Business, described the project as “one of the biggest Wi-Fi deployments across Australia”.

“With the pervasive use of mobile phones across all age groups and demographics, the mobile device has become the essential digital companion for retail shoppers,” Paitaridis said.

According to Optus Business, the Wi-Fi services will enable personalised content and tailored location information to be added to the consumer experience.

Image courtesy of Alan Levine under CC