Cisco Systems announced plans to restructure its consumer business and move away from direct sales to consumers. The plans include the closure of its Flip video camera business, as well as a refocusing of its Home Networking business in order to improve profitability and more closely tie it to the company's core networking infrastructure operations. Home networking products, such as the Linksys routers, will remain available in retail channels. Cisco's consumer videoconferencing system umi will also be integrated into the company's Business TelePresence product line. Cisco will stop selling umi directly and instead focus on sales through businesses and service providers. The Eos media software is also up for review, and Cisco will look at better integrating the core video technology or "other martket opportunities" for the product line. Cisco CEO John Chambers said that going forward the company's consumer products will be focused on helping enterprise and service provider customers optimise their own offerings. The restructuring is expected to lead to 550 job cuts at the company, as well pretax charges of USD 300 million in the second half of fiscal 2011.
