Microsoft is poised to lay off thousands of its employees globally, to reorganize its sales force.
A source with knowledge of the planned downsizing has reported that the U.S. firm would lay off “thousands” of its staff members across the world. The restructuring is all set to add an organizational merger involving its enterprise customer unit along with one or more of its SME-focused divisions. The changes are set to be declared in the coming week, expectedly.
Microsoft declined to comment.
The Puget Sound Business Journal, Bloomberg and The Seattle Times all reported earlier this weekend ‘major’ layoffs relating a move to increase the emphasis on cloud services within Microsoft’s sales teams all around the globe.
According to Bloomberg, the redundancies would be “some of the most significant in the sales force in years.”
The reorganization is looking to be a result of a diversity of leadership this previous year. Executives Judson Althoff and Jean-Philippe Courtois are under the charge of Microsoft’s sales and marketing divisions following the exit of long-serving COO Kevin Turner previous summer season. Althoff has been public, in his criticism of previous sales approaches, and he is keen to make Azure a central point.
However, the time is right for making a change, historically. The end of Microsoft’s fiscal year typically falls in the 7th month of the year. In recent years it has been a time when the company has declared to headcount reductions.
In the year 2016, Microsoft declared that it would cut 2,850 jobs —that will include at least 900 from its sales group, The Seattle Times reports — having two months ago said Microsoft would let go of 1,850 staff relating its smartphone business. In July 2015, it made 7,800 job cuts and wrote down 7.6 billion dollars of its Nokia acquisition.
