A reference with information of the planned downsizing told News that the U.S. firm would lay off “thousandfolds” of staff across the world. The restructuring is set to hold an organizational alliance that includes its business customer unit and one or more of its SME-focused divisions. The switches are set to be declared this coming week.
Microsoft refused to comment.
Earlier this weekend, the Puget Sound Business Journal, Bloomberg and The Seattle Times all published ‘major’ layoffs linked to a move to strengthen the emphasis on cloud services inside Microsoft’s sales teams worldwide. Bloomberg said the redundancies would be “some of the most important in the sales force in years.”
The change looks to be an event of a transition of leadership this past year. Exec Judson Althoff and Jean-Philippe Courtois took care of Microsoft’s sales and marketing departments following the exit of long-serving COO Kevin Turner last summer. Althoff, for one, been public in his analysis of previous sales approaches, and he is enthusiastic to make Azure a central part of the focus.
At any rate, the moment is right for a shift, historically. The end of Microsoft’s fiscal year typically comes in July, and it recent years it has done a time when the firm has published headcount reductions.
Last year, Microsoft stated that it would cut 2,850 jobs containing at least 900 from its sales group, according to The Seattle Times, two months earlier said it would let go of 1,850 staff linked to its smartphone business. In July 2015, it made 7,800 job cuts and wrote down $7.6 billion of its Nokia acquisition.
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