Microsoft is poised to lay off thousands of sales staff this week, amid efforts to reorganize its global sales force and focus on selling cloud services instead of standalone software.
According to a source familiar with the matter, Microsoft will be announcing this coming week major changes across its sales force. Its enterprise customer unit is going to be merged with one or more of its small and medium-sized business divisions.
The company’s sales staff has been trained for many years to sell standalone software. However, with companies shifting their business to the cloud, Microsoft needs to convince more customers to switch to its Azure cloud services in a bid to increase revenue. The downsizing and reorganization of its sales force will help the software giant in its effort to catch Amazon, the cloud services market leader.
Last year, long-standing COO Kevin Turner exited the company and executives Judson Althoff and Jean-Philippe Courtois took the helm of Microsoft’s sales and marketing divisions, keen to make Azure a central part of the company’s sales efforts.
On May 2016, Microsoft cut 1,850 jobs primarily related to their smartphone operations. Two months later, it cut another 2,850 jobs. In July 2015, the company made 7,800 job cuts and took a $7.6 billion write-down of its Nokia acquisition .
Source: TechCrunch
