Microsoft projected it would reduce operating costs by $1.5 billion when it laid off 5,100 employees in 2009, but the latest round of cuts the company is said to be planning may be more than a cost-cutting measure.
While Microsoft's top brass preach the company's mobile-first and cloud-first mantra at its partners conference wrapping up in Washington, D.C., CEO Satya Nadella told his company, and the world, that it is time for a culture change.
With analysts assessing Microsoft's girth to weigh in somewhere around 127,000 employees after its Nokia acquisition, Nadella stated he wanted the company to both slim down and move faster.
The company's slimming aspirations may be evidenced allegations from anonymous sources stating Microsoft was preparing to lay off 500 employees at Nokia's former Oulo, Finland, site and would cut 500 more jobs in other locations around the country. In the original leak of Microsoft's purported layoffs, anonymous sources said the company would levy significant cuts across its Xbox global team, engineering, marketing and software testings.
In moving faster, Microsoft has to follow trends that have staying power and won't end up in a failed combination of resource drains and investor pessimism. Moving faster means its solutions and innovations must be timely and intuitive, rather than dated and retroactive.
Microsoft's cloud-first half of the two-way tie at the top of its agenda has been up against Amazon and Google in a war on grounds most major tech companies believe to be here for good. Against lauded innovators Google and Amazon, Microsoft's size and history only grants it a little room for error as the three companies contend for widespread adoption of their data centers and cloud services.
Nadella has stated his belief that productivity is just as important at home and on vacation as it is in the office and on business trips. In his companywide memo, released on July 10, Nadella proclaims that Microsoft's cloud-first and mobile-first agenda will empower every individual and organization on the planet through its reinvention of productivity.
"We will develop and deploy secure platforms and infrastructure that enable all industries," stated Nadella. "And we will strike the right balance between using data to create intelligent, personal experiences, while maintaining security and privacy. By doing all of this, we will have the broadest impact."
During its 2014 Worldwide Partners Conference, Microsoft's executives and developers pushed a variety of platforms to the more than 16,000 partners in attendance. But the overarching message was a sales pitch on its cloud offerings and all of the wonderful things it could do for users and resellers.
Microsoft seems like it's attempting to establish itself in the Internet of Things by developing better integration between mobile devices and smartphones through laptops and its Azure servers, cloud operating systems and cloud productivity tools. Gone are the times when the company could guide the evolution of technology and here are the days where it battles to set itself apart from competition, moving in at every angle.
Phil Sorgen, corporate vice president at Microsoft, told attendees at the 2014 WPC that there was no debating the fact his company faces strong competition from traditional competitors and a wave of new companies.
"We're coming at it from a different place," stated Sorgen. "Despite our consistence performance and best-in-class commercial products, Microsoft views itself as a challenger in this industry. and it's only through groundbreaking innovation, a deep focus on the customer and building opportunities for our partners that we're going to thrive."
