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Broadcom vs. Cisco: Comparing Their Infrastructure Software Businesses

Broadcom reports a dedicated infrastructure software segment; Cisco reports software revenue across product areas and services. Their latest figures differ in scope and fiscal year.
From TheFinanceBase Team3 min to read
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Broadcom’s infrastructure software segment and Cisco’s total software revenue are different measures, so their dollar totals are not a like-for-like market-share comparison. Broadcom reports a dedicated software segment centered on private cloud and related enterprise portfolios; Cisco counts software revenue across product areas and services, while grouping product revenue into Networking, Security, Collaboration and Observability.

What the reported figures measure

The latest full fiscal years in the cited filings do not end on the same date: Broadcom’s FY2025 ended November 2, 2025, while Cisco’s FY2026 ended July 25, 2026. Their reported software measures also have different scopes.

Measure Broadcom Cisco
Fiscal year and end date FY2025; November 2, 2025 FY2026; July 25, 2026
Software-related revenue measure Infrastructure Software segment: $27.029 billion, up 26% year over year Total software revenue across all product areas and services: $23.2 billion, up 4%
Total company revenue $63.887 billion $63.325 billion
Software measure as a share of company revenue 42% of total revenue Not stated as a comparable share in the cited filing

Figures are from Broadcom Inc.’s FY2025 Form 10-K and Cisco Systems, Inc.’s FY2026 Form 10-K. The difference in fiscal periods and accounting scope means the revenue totals should not be read as a ranking of equivalent software businesses.

What Broadcom includes in infrastructure software

Portfolio scope

Broadcom reports two segments: Semiconductor Solutions and Infrastructure Software. The software segment includes private-cloud, mainframe, cybersecurity and enterprise software portfolios, as well as its Fibre Channel storage area network (FC SAN) business. Broadcom describes these offerings as supporting the planning, development, delivery, automation, management and security of applications across mainframe, distributed, edge, mobile, private-cloud and hybrid-cloud platforms.

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VMware Cloud Foundation and FY2025 growth

Broadcom describes VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) as an integrated enterprise platform spanning compute, networking, storage, management and security across supported environments, for virtual machines and containerized workloads. Broadcom attributed the FY2025 Infrastructure Software segment’s 26% revenue growth primarily to strong VCF demand and the transition to subscription licensing. Its filing also discusses license revenue recognized on certain contracts without termination-for-convenience rights; that accounting detail does not establish customer-level pricing or contract outcomes.

Broadcom reported $20.765 billion in Infrastructure Software segment operating income for FY2025, up 49% year over year. This is segment operating income—not software gross profit. Broadcom attributed the increase chiefly to VCF demand, the subscription-model transition, certain license revenue recognition and lower labor costs following VMware integration.

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How Cisco organizes its software-related business

Software revenue versus product categories

Cisco reported $23.2 billion in FY2026 total software revenue across all product areas and services. Separately, its filing reports product revenue in four named categories. Those category values are not a substitute for the total software measure.

Cisco FY2026 product category Product revenue Examples of offerings described by Cisco
Networking $34.668 billion Switching, routing, wireless and servers
Security $8.232 billion Network security, identity and access management, and SASE offerings
Collaboration $4.300 billion Webex and contact center offerings
Observability $1.095 billion Observability and network assurance offerings

These are Cisco Systems, Inc.’s FY2026 product-category figures. They should not be added together and presented as Cisco’s software revenue: the categories measure product revenue, while the software figure spans product areas and services.

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What VMware and Splunk add to the comparison

Broadcom and VMware

Broadcom’s 2022 VMware transaction announcement framed the deal as a way to combine Broadcom’s software portfolio with VMware’s multi-cloud capabilities. That is the company’s stated rationale at the time, not proof that every announced strategic benefit was achieved. In Broadcom’s FY2025 reporting, VCF is identified as the principal driver of Infrastructure Software segment growth.

Cisco and Splunk

Cisco completed its acquisition of Splunk on March 18, 2024. Cisco describes the combination as bringing network data and visibility together with security and observability products. In the FY2026 filing’s comparative acquisition disclosure, Cisco reported approximately $1.4 billion of Splunk revenue from the acquisition date through Cisco’s FY2024 year-end; that is a partial-year contribution, not a full-year Splunk revenue figure.

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Cisco also reported in an earlier quarterly comparison that customer consumption shifted from fewer on-premise Splunk deals toward more cloud subscriptions. That observation is limited to the comparison described in the filing; it does not quantify an overall migration rate.

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Keep Cisco’s AI infrastructure signal separate from software revenue

Cisco said hyperscaler AI infrastructure demand was approximately 6% of total revenue in FY2026, compared with less than 2% in FY2025. This is a company-wide demand figure, not software revenue or a software growth rate. Cisco also identifies customer concentration and supply considerations in connection with this demand, so it should not be treated as a standalone measure of recurring software performance.

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What the comparison cannot establish

The filings support a comparison of reported segment and company-wide measures, portfolio scope, and the growth drivers each company identifies. They do not provide a common basis here for comparing customer-level price changes, migration rates, retention, satisfaction or contract economics. The figures therefore cannot show which company offers customers better value, or whether customers are leaving, locked in or receiving a particular outcome.

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