The Cisco severance package includes giving affected employees 60 days to find a job within Cisco. If the employees cannot find a job within Cisco during that period, they will then receive a separation package consisting of four months salary, COBRA insurance paid for by Cisco during those four months and any accrued vacation time.
If they choose, employees can just take a severance package and separate from Cisco immediately rather than look for work during the first 60 days. When the employees separate from Cisco, they must sign a release agreeing not to sue Cisco for any reason or discuss the outsourcing/termination with anybody, in order to get the severance package.
A small number of affected NMTG engineers will be kept for another six months starting April 1, for an extended TOI period. After the extended TOI period, this group of engineers will also be offered the standard Cisco severance package.
Cisco's net management challenges
That Cisco is outsourcing or contracting out a large chunk of NMTG work may not be surprising. Network management has long been a struggle for Cisco -- even lamented by CEO John Chambers -- as might be expected for any company that averages eight or more acquisitions a year.
"It sort of makes you wonder what the role of NMTG is and its long-term future at Cisco," says Yankee Group analyst Zeus Kerravala.
Cisco might take issue with that, despite the recent outsourcing. The company six months ago tapped Jesper Andersen, a former Oracle application development executive, to head up NMTG.
"I think we have some great opportunities around areas like troubleshooting, performance management, diagnostics," Andersen says. "Those are really some of the areas where I think we have some great opportunities to further strengthen our portfolio of products."
IT systems and service management are also "exciting" areas for NMTG, Andersen says, especially with Cisco's broadening ambitions and focus in the data center. NMTG has five top priorities for this year and beyond, according to Andersen, including:
o Maintaining customer commitments.
o Reducing product overlap by reusing code and capabilities across product areas.
o Better, more "open" integration with broader systems management products.
o More consistent look and feel for management applications.
o Improving internal operations between NMTG and Cisco's "hardware" business units.
Andersen says he's comfortable with the "balance" between how much of this work is done internally at Cisco vs. the amount done by outside contractors. He said that balance could change over time, but did not disclose what that balance is now nor what it might be later this year and beyond.
Specific to the NMTG outsourcing, Andersen was cut off by a Cisco spokesperson:
"Yes, Cisco is realigning and restructuring around our five company priorities -- but we will not go into any additional specifics."