X
Tech

NetApp takes axe to hundreds of jobs

Storage company NetApp is once again cutting its headcount, this time by around 640 employees.
Written by Tas Bindi, Contributor

NetApp announced on Thursday that it would restructure its company globally, which includes a 6 percent reduction in staff.

In July, the storage company had 10,700 employees in about 150 offices worldwide. This means about 640 people will lose their jobs. This time last year, NetApp had 12,300 employees globally.

In a regulatory filing in February this year, NetApp said it would restructure to cut expenses and cut 12 percent of its workforce -- nearly 1,500 employees -- through the first quarter of fiscal 2017. At the time, the company planned to take a charge of between $60 million to $70 million for the terminations.

The California-based company has been struggling with increasing competition during its transition to cloud-based storage.

The company also made clear earlier this year that it is looking to become more of a software player, competing against the likes of VMware.

In February, it completed the acquisition of SolidFire in a bid to double down all-flash equipment.

"Over the past year, our CEO George Kurian has shared how NetApp has been transforming our business to improve productivity and lower our cost structure to align with our revenue expectations and fund investment in growth areas," the company said in a statement sent out Thursday.

NetApp said it was "starting to see results" from its investments in all-flash arrays, next-generation datacentres, and hybrid cloud solutions.

The company reported fiscal first quarter earnings of $64 million on revenue of $1.29 billion, and for the second quarter, it has projected revenue of between $1.26 billion to $1.41 billion.

"We remain confident that with sustained execution, we can expect a return to moderated growth in our FY18 (which begins in May 2017)," NetApp said in a statement.

Earlier this week, the company launched hybrid cloud storage tools to move, manage, and back up data as it hops between public and private cloud infrastructure.

In September, NetApp launched a new version of its SANtricity storage software and entry-level all-flash array designed to cater to mid-sized businesses that are looking to manage data lakes.

It also said it was partnering with Zaloni, which specialises in data lake management, to manage the information lifecycle as companies use Hadoop, NoSQL, and tools like Splunk.

Editorial standards