IBM is cutting jobs in the U.S. About 9,000 positions could be at risk in Raleigh, North Carolina, New York, Dallas, Texas, and California. The biggest cuts will affect the Cloud Classic division and 10% of the Cloud.
IBM is cutting jobs in the U.S. About 9,000 positions could be at risk in Raleigh, North Carolina, New York, Dallas, Texas, and California. The biggest cuts will affect the Cloud Classic division and 10% of the Cloud.
Employees in several departments, including consulting, cloud infrastructure, corporate social responsibility, internal IT and sales, were affected. Some learned of the termination through individual messages, while others heard about it in internal meetings, The Register reported .
Classic Cloud is the company’s original cloud infrastructure platform, formerly known as SoftLayer, which IBM acquired in 2013. It provides a wide range of services, including bare-metal servers, virtual servers, storage, and networking solutions that run in a traditional cloud environment. While IBM continues to support and service its Cloud Classic infrastructure, the company has also introduced a more advanced cloud environment called IBM Cloud VPC. This platform offers improved hardware, increased network performance (200 Gbps vs. 25 Gbps), greater flexibility in resource management, and enhanced security features compared to Cloud Classic. It is logical to expect that IBM Classic Cloud customers will migrate to Cloud VPC, making the division’s downsizing logical.
Sources told The Register that jobs are being moved overseas. For example, IBM has significantly more open positions in India than in the US, supporting the assumption that a significant portion of the work is being outsourced.
«This is a resource-intensive operation. I don’t know how many people work in IaaS classic. They don’t usually make that kind of information easy to find. I can tell they’ve made a lot of changes to move as much work to India as possible,» says one of the sources.
IBM is using several tactics to reduce its workforce, including formal layoffs labeled «Resource Actions,» as well as policies that encourage employees to leave voluntarily. One such policy is a new requirement for employees to be physically present in the office at least three days a week. Only medical exceptions are allowed, but middle management reportedly discourages even those, according to the report. Additionally, instead of laying off employees, IBM is asking them to sign severance agreements, which reduces the company’s risk.
Sources told the Register that IBM’s restructuring is far from complete. The company is expected to continue laying off as it seeks acquisitions and gradually phase out roles deemed obsolete or better suited to offshore teams. Employees who remain after this round of layoffs are bracing for further cuts as IBM shifts its workforce strategy.
Recall that in September, IBM laid off thousands of employees. Unlike regular layoffs, this time the company did it secretly.
