San Francisco: Microsoft said it was cutting an unspecified number of jobs amid reports the US tech giant was reorganising its global sales operations. “Today, we are taking steps to notify some employees that their jobs are under consideration or that their positions will be eliminated,” Microsoft said in an email response to an AFP inquiry.
Earlier, CNBC television said the company would be cutting some 3,000 positions, mostly from its non-US sales staff.
“Like all companies, we evaluate our business on a regular basis. This can result in increased investment in some places and, from time-to-time, re-deployment in others,” the company said in a statement.
The layoffs come as the US software colossus refocuses its sales force on making Microsoft a pivotal part of businesses relying on cloud computing, according to media reports.
Microsoft had more than 121,000 employees worldwide at the end of March, according to its website.
Chief executive Satya Nadella has sought to reduce the tech giant’s focus on software, shifting to cloud computing and business services.
“From large multinationals to small and medium businesses to non-profits all over the world, organisations are using Microsoft’s cloud platforms to power their digital transformation,” Nadella said when the company reported its earnings for the first three months of this year.
Global Equities research analyst Trip Chowdhry saw layoffs such as those taking place at Microsoft as symptoms of a technology industry undergoing a “major overhaul” caused by a shift to computing and online services being hosted in the Internet cloud. “This is not the end,” Chowdhry predicted.
“At companies transitioning from the old world to the new world you will see layoffs accelerate; it’s a slow and gradual and painful experience for them.”
Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services are the dominant “super-clouds” for computing, according to the analyst. — AFP
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