Cisco to create 200 new cloud jobs at Cisco Meraki UK

Cisco has announced plans to create 200 new UK jobs for cloud professionals with an investment of $2.5m in the UK-based Startupbootcamp accelerator.

The news came as Cisco entertained Sajid Javid the UK’s Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills at its new City of London HQ in Finsbury Square. Javid met with Cisco’s UK CEO Phil Smith to discuss the digitisation of the economy and Cisco’s role in catalysing this process in the UK.

In July Cisco announced it would invest $1 billion in the UK over the next three to five years. In November in announced its intention to buy London-based conferencing company Acano for £470m ($700 million) and Portcullis for an undisclosed figure.

The 200 new UK jobs will be at Cisco Meraki, a cloud controlled wifi, routing and security specialist arm which Cisco plans to grow three-fold by early 2017. Meraki is expected to grow in response to booming demand for solutions to the problems created by the BYOD trend in enterprises.

In a separate initiative Cisco is investing in Startupbootcamp, a startup accelerator that aims to nurture new digital talent. Cisco runs different technology themes in programmes across eight sites in Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, Copenhagen, Eindhoven, Israel, Istanbul and London. Startupbootcamp claims that 80% of its alumni are still trading and have attracted an average investment of £400,000 each.

Cisco already runs an incubator, IDEALondon, in association with University College London (UCL) and DC Thomson. Last week as IDEALondon celebrated its second anniversary it announced it has secured £10 million in external funding and earned £2 million in revenue, creating 100 jobs. Cisco customers now have 50 pilot projects using technology from IDEALondon startups. The pilot projects help refine the systems and give Cisco customers access to new options that otherwise wouldn’t be available, it claims.

“There are still huge opportunities to improve productivity with digital technology,” said Cisco’s UK CEO Phil Smith.

“Two hundred new high value jobs is fantastic news,” said Javid. “Britain is the place to do business.”