NetApp CEO George Kurian told analysts in its first quarter earnings call that it is reducing its 10,800-strong headcount by 5.5 percent, despite reporting a five percent year on year increase in net revenues to $1.3 billion.
Kurian said the global job cuts are motivated by “strategic alignment and focus” on its storage systems and software divisions. He confirmed that SolidFire – which NetApp acquired in 2016 – and its hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) teams would be most affected by the cuts.
“We realigned about 5.5 percent of our workforce and those were in parts of the business – in all the functions of the business, but in those parts of the business that were not particularly aligned to our go-forward priorities”, he explained on the call
“SolidFire was part of the team impacted. We are narrowing our focus with the SolidFire and HCI portfolio to the high margin parts of the market as we have signalled on prior calls.”
