Cisco (News - Alert) announced last week that the company is preparing to lay off 1,300 workers, making up about two percent of Cisco’s 65,000+ workforce. Just a year ago, the computer networking product and services provider laid off about 10,000 employees.

According to Cisco, the layoffs are part of a limited restructuring, stating the layoffs “are part of a continuous process of simplifying the company, as well as assessing the economic environment in certain parts of the world.”

In May, Cisco’s CEO, John Chambers (News - Alert) cited Europe’s debt crisis, weak government spending and a drop in orders from large corporate customers for a fourth-quarter profit forecast that was below analysts’ estimates.  And again has cautioned that its revenue for the period that ends this month is likely to increase by as little as two percent from the same time last year.

Cisco has yet to announce what part of its operations will be trimmed.  While clearly this layoff cutback seems insignificant to the nearly 10,000 that occurred just one year ago in Cisco’s attempt to save $1 billion, to the 1,300 employees that are losing their jobs it is quite significant.

Now might be a good time to look to alternative providers of Cisco SMARTnet, the technical support service for Cisco equipment. XS International is an independent reseller of Cisco products and provides an alternative to Cisco SMARTnet, offering support for up to 40 percent less than the competition without sacrificing quality.

XSi’s SMARTnet value added benefits and services include contract flexibilities, simple contract management with all support under a single agreement for multiple OEMs, SLAs and global support, payment flexibilities, hardware and software support beyond Cisco end of service and cost reductions over Cisco’s deepest discounts.

To find out more about David Tucker, Vice President and General Manager Small Business Business Unit (SBBU), and Cisco, visit the company at ITEXPO West 2012. To be held Oct. 2-5 at the Austin Convention Center in Austin, TX, ITEXPO (News - Alert) is the world’s premier IP communications event. Tucker will be a keynote speaker at the event. For more information on ITEXPO West 2012 click here.