Microsoft said to be planning sales force overhaul; layoffs likely – Yakima Herald-Republic

Microsoft is planning a reorganization of its sales groups that will likely bring layoffs, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Its unclear what groups will be affected and where they are located. The shift, which could be announced as soon as next week, comes as Microsoft retools its legions of sales teams to emphasize its cloud-computing products instead of licenses for boxed software.

A Microsoft spokesman declined to comment.

Plans for a cloud-focused reorganization were reported earlier by thePuget Sound Business JournalandBloomberg News, which said the shift will bring some of the most significant changes to the sales force in years. Local marketing efforts in various countries will be affected, Bloomberg reported.

The weeks around the end of Microsofts fiscal year, which was Friday, often include announcements of a corporate reorganization for the year ahead.

Microsofts sales groups have been in flux since the exit of longtime chief operating officer Kevin Turner last year. At the time ofhis departurefrom the company, he oversaw 51,000 employees in an umbrella organization for sales, marketing, operations and Microsofts corporate technology needs.

That group, Microsofts largest, was broken up.

Microsoft sales executive Judson Althoff took over the companys business-oriented sales force, and Jean-Philippe Cortois received oversight for Microsofts foreign sales and marketing subsidiaries.

Althoff hasbeen criticalof Microsofts former sales approach, which he characterized as an attempt to sell Azure, Microsofts platform of on-demand computing power and software services, using strategies learned from decades of selling out-of-the-box software.

Layoffs announced last July which targeted 2,850 cuts over the course of Microsofts just-ended fiscal year included at least 900 employees of the sales group. Althoff said in September that Microsoft had also added to the payroll about 1,000 salespeople with specialties in selling cloud-computing products.

Microsoft at the end of March employed about 121,500 people, including 45,500 in Washington state. The total tally includes the 10,000 employees Microsoft scooped up in its$27billion acquisitionof professional social network LinkedIn in December.

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Microsoft said to be planning sales force overhaul; layoffs likely - Yakima Herald-Republic