As another year draws to a close, it's an instinct to look back and reflect, reminisce, and re-evaluate.
With the first year of SDxCentral under the banner of InfraXmedia done and dusted, it’s safe to say it’s been a heck of a lot of fun. To see the year off right, we’ve compiled a list not of our favorite stories - but those that were most read by you, the reader. Some might raise a few eyebrows; they certainly did on this side, that’s for sure.
With that, here are the most-read stories on SDxCentral in 2025.
Cisco announces layoffs days after CEO said it won’t cut jobs in favor of AI
The most read story of the year was, sadly, one about layoffs. There’s an unfortunate mantra in the world of journalism: if it bleeds, it leads. And unfortunately, this is one of those times.
Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins told CNBC in August that he didn’t want to “get rid of a bunch of people right now,” instead wanting the company to innovate faster and “be more productive.”
Mere days later, though, those words appeared to ring hollow as 157 employees found themselves subject to layoffs. By no means anywhere near the numbers seen from the mass tech layoffs at the start of the year, but for those staff affected at Cisco's Milpitas, California campus and its former Redwood City, California headquarters, it was still a story of sorrow.
There were even suggestions from one Chicago-based law firm that Cisco had violated U.S. labor laws related to the required 60-day notice before mass layoffs can take place, though that went nowhere.
For all the innovation and breakthroughs achieved in 2025, it was yet another year of layoffs and cuts. And while this number was small, Cisco, for its part, had reduced its global workforce by 5% only a year prior as it sought to restructure and maximize shareholder returns.
Read the full story
Broadcom sells VMware’s HQ in reported $115M deal
The second most-read story on SDxCentral in 2025 was yet another tale of downsizing and dealing. This time it was Broadcom, after it sold the site of VMware’s former headquarters.
The 1.1 million-square-foot facility in Palo Alto, California’s Stanford Research Park was sold to Harvest Properties and TPG Real Estate in early October, with several ex-VMware-ers going on to share the story alongside happy memories of their time there, what with its fitness centers and cafes.
The sale was one of a huge swathe of changes Broadcom has made to VMware since its 2023 takeover. Chief among them was some 1,200 jobs cut at the VMware Palo Alto site back in late 2023. That came alongside prior reports suggesting Broadcom CEO Hock Tan wanted staff to come into the office should they live within 50 miles of the location. “If you live within 50 miles of an office, you get your butt in here," Tan reportedly told VMware workers.
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Is HPE’s Juniper honeymoon already over?
Arguably, one of the biggest stories of the year was the long-awaited closure of Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s (HPE) acquisition of Juniper Networks.
But while the deal finally found itself over the line, there was some behind-the-scenes baggage that emerged in July that was the subject of our third most-read story of the year.
HPE had formed a board “strategy committee” run by Robert Calderoni that was tasked with driving “shareholder value,” a driver important for activist investment firm Elliott Investment Management, which is behind the strategy committee’s formation.
A former Ariba, SAP, and Citrix staffer, Calderoni's hire came about only as part of an agreement between HPE’s board and Elliott, with the exec also working on the Juniper integration as part of HPE’s Integration Committee.
HPE CEO Antonio Neri previously told investors its $14 billion Juniper deal was “the fastest path to increase in our shareholder value.” But his comments came after an apparent letter from Elliott calling for Neri’s removal over suggestions of uncertainty as to whether HPE would gain government approval for the deal.
But as the year closes, Neri remains in place, the deal went through, and Juniper has been firmly integrated into the new HPE Networking unit.
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Palo Alto Networks in talks to acquire SentinelOne: report
At No. 4 was a report on a deal that never was. There were rumblings about Palo Alto Networks coming in for AI cybersecurity solutions provider SentinelOne.
Its stock price surged in the wake of the reports, but it was instead CyberArk that would find itself the subject of a bid from the cybersecurity giant.
Expected to close in mid-2026, the prospective $25 billion purchase was the second biggest cybersecurity acquisition of the year, passed only by Google Cloud’s ongoing $32 billion Wiz buyout. It would also be Palo Alto’s biggest acquisition to date, dwarfing its $1.1 billion grab of IBM’s QRadar software-as-a-service (SaaS) assets back in 2024.
For SentinelOne, meanwhile, life goes on.
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Cisco, Juniper, and Extreme lead a dynamic WLAN race
We round out the top 5 with expert coverage of some stellar market numbers from Dell’Oro Group, which found that Cisco, Juniper Networks, and Extreme Networks were among the top dogs for the public cloud-managed campus switch and wireless LAN (WLAN) market.
That report suggested the market is on the up, forecast to hit double-digit growth over the next three years in a space that’s becoming increasingly competitive.
For example, Cisco is making strides beyond its traditional networking base while HPE has moved to update its WLAN platform in the wake of closing its monumental takeover of Juniper
With revenues of in excess of $12 billion projected in 2029, expect the WLAN market to get faster but also a hell of a lot more fierce.
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