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Microsoft to announce job cuts in coming weeks to focus on cloud business

Times are changing at Microsoft though it seems there will be fewer staff to celebrate the change. For according to the latest reports emerging from the tech grapevine, the Redmond giant could be seriously contemplating trimming its worldwide sales and marketing workforce by thousands at one go.

The above is also being attributed to Microsoft’s cloud operations getting renewed focus so that the company is now more interested in selling cloud software than anything else. This comes across as one of the most significant changes to hit the company in recent times.

So far, Microsoft’s biggest strength has been software designed for operation in desktop and server computers. However, the need of the moment is a sales force that can convince businesses to adapt to the company’s cloud services.

The new found urgency to have more businesses hooked up to Microsoft’s cloud services can also be attributed to the change in leadership of the sales and marketing divisions. As Ex-COO Kevin Turner left Microsoft after serving for 11 years and it is Judson Althoff and Jean-Philippe Courtois that are filling up the void.

A thorough restructuring of the salesforce too is on the cards, sources who chose to remain anonymous claimed. For instance, the enterprise customer division along with a few other such divisions catering to smaller businesses might be merged to better leverage available resources.

The announcements to this affect could be arriving as early as within the next week itself. This has also been the month when the software giant has been announcing reductions in its workforce for a few years now. The highest in recent times has been when 7,800 heads were laid off which also brought to an end its painful acquisition of Nokia.

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Microsoft continues to reel under the ill-planned Nokia acquisition so that it now has just zero presence in the otherwise highly lucrative mobile business. Further, with competition from Amazon Web Services and Google picking up steam in the cloud space, Microsoft it seems has little option but to retrain its focus on the cloud rather than losing the advantage it enjoys in this space.