Amid reports of thousands of layoffs, Microsoft detailed a restructure within its sales and marketing teams. Reports from Reuters confirm that the reshuffle will affect employees under executive vice presidents Judson Althoff and Jean-Phillipe Courtois, as well as chief marketing officer Chris Capossela. All three sent memos to their teams detailing the structure of the redesign. The new strategy will allow for a closer focus on the company’s accelerating cloud business, and a merger of its SME and enterprise customers unit. Speaking to Reuters, a Microsoft spokesperson simply commented, “Microsoft is implementing changes to better serve our customers and partners”.
Potential Layoffs
Despite reports from TechCrunch, the memo did not mention layoffs. Such a re-focus is expected to result in the loss of thousands of jobs, and will likely be the biggest hit to these divisions in many years. The cuts will allegedly impact thousands of employees across the world. July is usually the month for such announcements, before the end of the company’s fiscal year, where it announces employee headcounts. Last year, Microsoft announced it would cut 2,850 jobs across the board, while 2015 held the announcement of 7,800 losses in its phone division. We probably won’t find out a specific number until an official statement, but it does seem the company has been planning this for a while. We probably won’t find out a specific number for this round until an official statement, but it looks like the company has been planning this for a while. Althoff and Courtois are both new leadership in the division, the former fully behind a cloud push. The changes should reduce the costs of selling cloud services and more focus Microsoft’s efforts. Reports from Business Insider suggest a closer focus on specific industries, including education, retail, health, manufacturing, and financial services.
