As tipped yesterday Microsoft has moved to restructure their business divisions, hundreds of employees who thought their career was “safe” at the big software Company are setto be retrenched claim insiders.
The Company claims that their future is all about artificial intelligence and the cloud, the employees that will stay are the staff with greater technical and industry-specific expertise.
The company unveiled the steps in an email to staff Monday that was obtained by Bloomberg.
Commercial sales will be split into two segments — one focused on the biggest customers and one for small and medium clients. Employees will be aligned around six industries — manufacturing, financial services, retail, health, education and government. They’ll focus on selling software in four categories: Modern workplace, business applications, apps and infrastructure and data and AI.
In Australia the Company who is struggling in the consumer market is now in a major battle with Alphabet and Amazon.
Google has recently expanded marketing activities in Australia, for their suite of intelligent business apps, while Amazon is growing their Web Services business up against Microsoft’s Assure.
Traditional Microsoft customers who want to move workplace applications and data to the cloud, as well as take advantage of advances in artificial intelligence are not necesarily staying with Microsoft.
The company, which has not dramatically overhauled its salesforce in years, wants to tailor those teams better for selling cloud software rather than desktop and server solutions.
“There is an enormous $4.5 trillion market opportunity across our Commercial and Consumer businesses,” according to the email, which was sent by Worldwide Commercial Business chief Judson Althoff, Global Sales and Marketing group leader Jean-Philippe Courtois and Chris Capossela, the company’s chief marketing officer.
People familiar with the plan said last week that the changes will result in some job losses.
In the consumer and device sales area, is creating six regions selling products like Windows software and Surface hardware, Office 365 cloud software for consumers and the Xbox game console. The group will also focus on new areas such as the Internet of Things, voice, mixed reality and AI, Australia falls under the Asia Pacific region.
Microsoft will track metrics including large companies deploying Windows 10, sales of Windows 10 Pro devices and competition against Alphabet’s Chromebooks and Apple’s iPads with their Surface tablets.
Their latest Surface Tablet offering was recently slammed by FixIt as being “unrepairable” and stuck together by glue.
Microsoft aims to expand it’s consumer business by creating “desire for the same creativity tools” that people have at work through Surface, Windows devices and Office 365, according to the memo.
“In addition, gaming is growing rapidly across all device types and is evolving to new scenarios like eSports, game broadcasting, and mixed reality content and we will drive growth in this category as well,” according to the memo.
