● 02.05.09

●● Novell Layoffs May Have Not Been Announced Yet

Posted in Europe, Finance, Microsoft, Novell at 10:17 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

100 layoffs merely seismic waves?

LARGE-SCALE Microsoft layoffs have only gotten started according to analysts, but it’s not the exception. Microsoft is likely to have more than one ‘wave’ of layoffs. Its subsidiaries are likely to suffer a similar fate, as they already have [1, 2].

Back in November, Novell was shutting down offices across Europe and German employees of Novell have apparently just discovered/uttered this thing:

“The day after Hovsepian said no more cuts beyond 100, he told German employees (as per German law) that there would be more cuts coming,” the source said.It also seems that the 100 or so that have been announced could be a conservative count, with this initial round going deeper.“I’m hearing from all over the company that, in fact, the cuts are deeper than ’100 employees,’” the source said.[...]It doesn’t take a nuclear physicist to conclude the actual number could lay somewhere between 100 and 1,000.

2.5% in terms of layoffs seemed rather low considering the fact that the company had made only minimal adjustments. The person who talked about these adjustments quit the company a few weeks ago. Novell still operates at a significant loss and it loses business (core business like Netware). Some say it might be acquired by Microsoft one day and Novell was recently voted the least likely technology company to survive 2009.

Eric Lai’s 'damage control' report in ComputerWorld (later it spread itself to other IDG domains) refuted a seemingly inaccurate report from CNET, but it was not able to altogether rule out layoffs. Novell was forced to say something.

Lai’s report was followed by many more, such as:

I. Novell confirms 100 layoffs

The open source vendor Novell on Saturday confirmed that the company was trimming its workforce by less than 100 people, considerably fewer than had been anticipated.

II. Novell cuts 100 workers

As layoffs go, the ones that took place last week at commercial operating system maker Novell were pretty small, and a lot less than was originally reported out there on the Web.

III. Novell axes 100 staff

Novell has confirmed it has laid off around 100 staff after reports of much higher numbers of lay-offs started circulating last week.

IV. Novell dispels rumours but loses 100 workers

As Novell employs around 4,200 people worldwide, the figure represents just 2.3 per cent of the workforce. Some sources had predicted that up to 25 per cent could be handed their marching orders.

There’s no guessing what may happen next. Could the report from CNET actually be right?

As a side note, later we discovered that editors and writers of IDG were being laid off as well. █

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