Cisco has reported a third consecutive quarter of revenue decline for the business unit that houses Webex.
Cisco’s Hybrid Work division, which will be known as Collaboration moving forward, saw sales drop nine percent year on year to just under $1.1bn.
The vendor’s Q2 earnings call was largely focused on its networking business, which saw sales grow seven percent to $5.9bn and beat analyst expectations. Its ‘Internet for the Future’ portfolio – which houses next-gen networking technology – saw sales rocket 42 percent to just over $1.3bn.
Scott Herren, Chief Financial Officer at Cisco, said that the drop in collaboration sales was “driven by declines in our collaboration devices and meetings offerings”.
He added, however, that this was partially offset by the continued rollout of Cisco’s CPaaS offering, which is built on its acquisition of imimobile.
Cisco also reported declines in sales for collaboration tech in its previous Q1 and Q4. This was after announcing a record quarter for Webex in the previous Q3.
CEO Chuck Robbins was also asked to comment on rumours that the networking giant recently made an offer for big data software firm Splunk.
He declined to comment, but said Cisco is constantly evaluating acquisition opportunities.
“We think for every deal we do, we probably look at 10 to 15 companies,” he said.
“We base our decisions on, first and foremost, strategic fit, secondly, cultural fit, and equally as important, the financial and the valuation fit.
“We are always disciplined, and we continue to focus on both inorganic and organic opportunities, but I will tell you that you should expect us to continue to be very, very disciplined as we go forward as well.”
