EMC and VMware to cut 1,800 posts worldwide
Storage and software giant EMC and its subsidiary VMware have revealed plans to slash about 1,800 posts worldwide.
EMC will cut positions in its Information Storage, RSA Information Security and Information Intelligence divisions. The workforce changes are expected to cost the firm $80m.
The reduction was revealed in EMC's latest 10-Q filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
"In the first quarter of 2013, EMC implemented restructuring programs to create further operational efficiencies which will result in a workforce reduction of 1,004 positions," the filing states.
"All of these actions are expected to be completed within a year of the start of each program."
EMC subsidiary and virtualisation specialist VMware will also reduce its workforce by 800 positions according to filing.
"In the first quarter of 2013, VMware implemented a plan to streamline its operations in order to focus its business on strategic areas it has determined to be most compelling. The plan includes the elimination of approximately 800 positions across all major functional groups and geographies," it states.
Large enterprise vendors are trimming workers on many fronts. For instance, IBM said that it will speed up its "workforce rebalancing" that would usually occur over 2013 and push changes through in the second quarter.
EMC fell short of Wall Street expectations for its earnings in the first quarter of 2013, reporting a profit of $580m or 26 cents per share compared to Wall Street's expectations of 40 cents.
EMC seems to be focusing on beefing up its earnings through its software portfolio, both its own storage software and that of subsidiaries virtualisation specialist VMware and security company RSA.
At EMC World 2013 this week the company has been pushing the idea of the EMC-powered software-defined datacentre, using VMware's ESX server virtualisation, VMware Nicira networking virtualisation and its ViPR software defined storage platform, announced yesterday.
"The software defined datacentre stack we're building is a horizontal stack," said EMC CEO Joe Tucci in a keynote at EMC World yesterday.
"If you look at any company you would say had a cloud topology, take an AWS, a Google or a Facebook - they're all building their stack horizontally. They have different kinds of applications but they basically use the same pieces of the infrastructure."
Tucci said the flexibility and scalability of the software-defined datacentre would offer increased efficiency and choice over siloed datacentre architectures where different hardware stacks are built to serve different applications, such as Oracle databases or Microsoft Exchange.