Hewlett Packard--to cut 9000 Jobs!"

DoubleD

NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ) said it plans to spend $1 billion to automate data centers and make other operational changes in its IT services business, resulting in the shedding of 9,000 jobs over several years.

The world's largest personal-computer maker expects to take a $1 billion charge during a multiyear period. It anticipates the restructuring will generate the same amount in annual savings, or $500 million to $700 million in net savings after reinvestment.

H-P made a leap into providing corporate IT services with its purchase of Electronic Data Systems, or EDS, in 2008, and over the past year slashed costs and cut jobs as part of the integration. Chief Financial Officer Cathie Lesjak said this latest move represents the second phase of joining the companies, where H-P can combine data centers, IT networks and other operations.

"We have an opportunity to further accelerate our competitive advantage," said Ann Livermore, head of H-P's enterprise services business, during a conference call to discuss the changes. She said finding ways to provide automated services to clients is replacing work-force arbitrage, or locating employees in lower-paying areas, as an important driver of success in the services industry.

"We think the next 10 years are going to be about who can automate the delivery of services," she said.

Along with the 9,000 job cuts, H-P plans to hire about 6,000 new workers to add to its sales force and global delivery centers. H-P has about 300,000 employees.

H-P shares closed Friday at $46.01 and were recently down 1.1% to $45.52 in premarket trading. The stock is up 33% over the past year.

The company saw its latest-quarter profit climb as shipments in its core PC business rose on growing consumer demand.

-By Jerry A. DiColo, Dow Jones Newswires; 212-416-2155; jerry.dicolo@dowjones.com

UPDATE: H-P To Cut 9,000 Jobs, Spend $1B In Restructuring - WSJ.com

earweed

Got nothing to say. A lot of IT workers losing jobs and they're hiring more salemen...

Somnipotent

that's common when companies merge and buy assets. i work for sprint and that happened when they merged with nextel. most of the nextel folk are gone now or have been aligned with outsourced companies like lucent or ericcson. still sucks though.

TheMechanic

crap, where are we supposed to work if everything is being outsourced? Jeez man, the job market gets tougher every day

tpatt100

HP has been cutting like mad the past couple of years. I was a dod contractor under HP and the HP direct employees got two pay cuts when I was there.

Then they brag about how much cash they have on hand. Guess giving tax cuts to corporations means they can fatten their wallets, now I hear they are thinking of buying Palm

Bl8ckr0uter

tpatt100 wrote: »

. . . . now I hear they are thinking of buying Palm

HP buys Palm -- Engadget

jamesleecoleman

When I first saw the title, I thought they were going to cut the jobs from India and whatever place they had outsouced jobs too.

Hyper-Me

They bought 3com late last year too.

Theys probably where a lot of this factors in...cutting the people whos jobs they just bought from various companies.

thenjduke

This is fine but they need people to watch over these data centers and they need to hire consultant firms so time for us all to charge for consultant work prices. Yes they can automate all they want but remember that we are humans and humans write the code to automate these services and that means that they need us other humans to fix the other humans that made the mistakes.

Kaminsky

thenjduke wrote: »

This is fine but they need people to watch over these data centers

Data centre staff are a pretty small bunch of people that work on multiple projects at the same time.

I know 9,000 seems a lot but it's only 3% of the work force where as other big IT companies are laying off 10%, 20%, 30%. Not sure if this is the first time HP have laid off large numbers of people before in this recession but if this is the first time, they have done very well to last this long without doing it. Sucks if you are one of the 9,000 but if you are one of the ones staying, it bodes well that they are being so resiliant to the recession thus far.

I don't like the sound of an automated helpdesk though. How many miss directed fault calls is that going to generate and impact on customer dissatisfaction. Even when phoning a fault overseas where there is a language difficulty, as least you can get your problem understood eventually.

Turgon

DoubleD wrote: »

NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ) said it plans to spend $1 billion to automate data centers and make other operational changes in its IT services business, resulting in the shedding of 9,000 jobs over several years.

The world's largest personal-computer maker expects to take a $1 billion charge during a multiyear period. It anticipates the restructuring will generate the same amount in annual savings, or $500 million to $700 million in net savings after reinvestment.

H-P made a leap into providing corporate IT services with its purchase of Electronic Data Systems, or EDS, in 2008, and over the past year slashed costs and cut jobs as part of the integration. Chief Financial Officer Cathie Lesjak said this latest move represents the second phase of joining the companies, where H-P can combine data centers, IT networks and other operations.

"We have an opportunity to further accelerate our competitive advantage," said Ann Livermore, head of H-P's enterprise services business, during a conference call to discuss the changes. She said finding ways to provide automated services to clients is replacing work-force arbitrage, or locating employees in lower-paying areas, as an important driver of success in the services industry.

"We think the next 10 years are going to be about who can automate the delivery of services," she said.

Along with the 9,000 job cuts, H-P plans to hire about 6,000 new workers to add to its sales force and global delivery centers. H-P has about 300,000 employees.

H-P shares closed Friday at $46.01 and were recently down 1.1% to $45.52 in premarket trading. The stock is up 33% over the past year.

The company saw its latest-quarter profit climb as shipments in its core PC business rose on growing consumer demand.

-By Jerry A. DiColo, Dow Jones Newswires; 212-416-2155; jerry.dicolo@dowjones.com

UPDATE: H-P To Cut 9,000 Jobs, Spend $1B In Restructuring - WSJ.com

Nothing really new. The move to shared services, virtualisation and automation will only continue.

We will see more support jobs 'rationalised' and axed as the disparate bespoke islands of infrastructure disolve into uberDC's and clouds. My advice as ever is to get some field experience in support and then move into projects and design as fast as you possibly can.

Support costs are always on the radar and the jobs that go with them..

So dont get stuck into the rut of incremental cert taking to protect, never mind accelerate your career because by the time you have cleared them the squeeze on those sorts of jobs will only be tighter. Doing the cert tracks properly can take years. Lots of people are doing that but the changes in IT delivery are running them over. A few people on the forum will dispute this and good luck to them, but 5 years down the line Im sorry to say a good number will be most likely affected by this trend.

Use certs as a lever to get out of 1 -2 - 3 support ticket land by getting your hands on some project work..integration, migration, colocation, outsourcing. In otherwords, experience in the kind of work that delivers the industries present and future direction of travel. A CIO will want to reduce costs, but if that requires any of the things I have listed then someone has to get them there..