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HPE sharpening the axe for 5,000 heads – report

All part of CEO Whitman's 'long-term ops and financial blueprint'

Hewlett Packard Enterprise is about to release the trap door again with 5,000 employees, or almost 10 per cent of its workforce, expected to fall through it.

The redundancies, first reported by Bloomberg, are part of the HPE Next initiative that CEO Meg Whitman hatched in June, a radical programme – the latest in a long line – to improve financial results and compete with cloud rivals.

Staff across the organisation in the US and other large operations including the UK are expected to be in the firing line, with managers also at risk of losing their jobs. HPE told us it was preparing a statement about the matter.

Since Whitman took the top job at HPE in late 2011, she has laid off more than 100,000 of her people, carved off the PC and printer businesses into HP Inc, and spun off the outsourcing and software businesses to DXC and Microfocus.

Only in the last set of financial results for HPE's Q3 of fiscal 2017 ended July 31 did the company report group growth on the back of storage and networking sales – the first time HPE has done so since it was formed in November 2015

Contrary to perceived wisdom in the industry – that software and cloud services are the best paths to make money – Whitman has largely fashioned a bigger hardware business, slurping the likes of Aruba, Nimble Storage, SimpliVity, and SGI.

The HPE Next initiative, under the control of Jon Faust – senior veep of finance, worldwide financial planning and analysis – has already seen the removal of the exec tier that ran the regions (EMEA, Americas, etc) and a restructure of individual country operations.

The plan is simplify the organisation to speed decision making on investments or sales priorities, and reduce overheads. In total, HPE has targeted $1.5bn worth of cost savings over the next three years, CFO Tim Stonesifer said during the most recent results call.

Whitman said of HPE Next in June that it was "on a par in scope with any of the recent separations" and the ultimate aim will be to create a "long-term operating and financial blueprint".

Sources across the organisation previously told The Reg that they were braced for further job losses but anticipated deeper cuts of up to 20 per cent. ®

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