7 Channel People Making Waves This Week at 8x8, Intel, Google Cloud, RingCentral, More
Google, which says it's cutting 12,000 workers, has not indicated how the layoffs impact Google Cloud.
January 27, 2023
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Private equity investment firm Grain Management has wrapped its acquisition of Spectrotel in a deal that helps the network aggregator significantly scale its managed services.
The acquisition brings together a broadband-focused investment firm with one of the channel’s most established carrier aggregators and technology services providers. They did not disclose the financial terms of the transaction.
Spectrotel will bring to market a mobile device management offering as a result of the acquisition.
Ross Artale made waves because he will be replacing Jack Dayan as CEO.
Learn more here about Artale’s vision for the company.
Mitel is in exclusive negotiations with Atos to acquire Unify, the UCC services businesses of the Atos group. In an announcement released this week, the company said Unify’s portfolio, partners and talent would significantly expand Mitel’s scale and offerings.
Mitel officials said the combined company would have the operational scale, portfolio, geographic reach, go-to-market resources and financial profile to modernize the UC experience for customers faster and more effectively than either company could do alone.
“Unify and Mitel both have a deep heritage in the communications market centered around customer needs and a channel-driven go-to-market strategy,” said Marcus Hänsel, chief executive officer of Unify at Atos. “Mitel’s commitment to UC, heritage of success and experience integrating complementary global businesses gives us great confidence in our future together.”
Discover here what two analysts had to say about the deal.
8×8 recently announced layoffs impacting 7% of its workforce, or about 155 employees. There’s speculation these layoffs could be part of an effort to ready 8×8 for acquisition. However, it’s difficult to read into whether that’s the case when the remarks of the company’s CEO are general in nature.
8×8 CEO Samuel Wilson made waves when he suggested that the layoffs were regrettably “in order to align with emerging marketplace opportunities.”
Again, it’s not so clear how 8×8 will position itself.
Learn more from a laid-off employee about his experience leaving the company.
Tech sector layoffs from pandemic-era overhiring continue at Amazon and Microsoft, and they’re spilling over into the cloud businesses. Furthermore, Google says it’s cutting 12,000 workers — no word yet how that impacts Google Cloud.
It’s no secret that many companies, especially those able to support remote work, added excess numbers of employees during COVID-19 to keep up with unprecedented demand.
Perhaps the worst part of the layoffs, at least at Amazon, is that so many now-former employees say they learned of them via email rather than through one-on-one meetings or even phone calls. Hyoun Park, CEO and chief analyst at Amalgam Insights made waves with his take on LinkedIn earlier this month:
“One of the most frustrating things to me about the recent tech layoffs across Salesforce, Amazon, Twitter, etc… is that they are happening at some of the ‘most innovative’ companies in the world. Every part of the process, down to the cookie cutter 10% cuts, feels like status quo thinking pushed down from last-gen B-schools ignoring both the humanity of the process & long-term goals of the company.”
Here’s what Microsoft’s CEO had to say about that company’s layoffs.
RingCentral has conducted another round of layoffs, and one source told Channel Futures it was part of an effort to “tidy up the books” in anticipation of acquiring 8×8.
Late last year, another unnamed source told Investing.com that RingCentral was working with an investment bank to evaluate a potential deal with 8×8. The proposed transaction would give RingCentral access to its own contact-center-as-a-service (CCaaS) offering.
Several employees used LinkedIn to announce being laid off. Luke Nagy was one of those who made waves. The former strategic partner manager at RingCentral worked for the company for more than three years.
Nagy took to LinkedIn to explain that his wife was laid off just two weeks earlier from another firm.
Read what one expert said about what companies must do to right size.
Intel is increasing the number of job cuts it had planned for California from 201 to 544 workers.
That’s according to Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) notices with the California Employment Development Department.
Intel is cutting 201 workers at its headquarters in Santa Clara. That’s up from 90. Expect the layoffs to be complete by the end of this month.
In November, Intel announced a plan to slash operational expenses by up to $10 billion within three years, including $3 billion this year. The cost-reduction plan includes layoffs.
Pat Gelsinger, Intel’s CEO, announced the spending cuts during the company’s third-quarter earnings call. In addition, Intel will reduce $2 billion in capital expenditures.
Gelsinger made waves when he said layoffs are necessary to “optimize headcount,” which he said will add $2 billion more in savings.
Analysts this week also called Intel’s latest earnings report its worst in 20 years.
Read more here about the cuts.
Tech’s high-flying days are over, and nowhere is that more apparent than at 24-year-old Google, once among the most coveted of places to work. After doubling its headcount in five years, Google now is shedding 12,000 jobs — the largest number in its history. Yet that figure could jump if activist investor Chris Hohn gets his way.
That’s going to raise eyebrows.
“If you’re a Google employee, there’s no one in the world you hate right now more than Chris Hohn,” said Joseph Carlson (pictured), host of The Joseph Carlson Show, which provides guidance on stock purchases, on YouTube.
Hohn controls approximately $20 billion in various companies, and between $6 billion and $7 billion of Alphabet, in particular. This gives him “a lot of sway, a lot of power” over Google, Carlson said on Jan. 23.
“Ultimately management will need to go further,” Hohn wrote in a letter to CEO Sundar Pichai.
He wants Alphabet to cut more jobs.
Learn more here about Hohn as well as what’s happening at Google Cloud.
Tech’s high-flying days are over, and nowhere is that more apparent than at 24-year-old Google, once among the most coveted of places to work. After doubling its headcount in five years, Google now is shedding 12,000 jobs — the largest number in its history. Yet that figure could jump if activist investor Chris Hohn gets his way.
That’s going to raise eyebrows.
“If you’re a Google employee, there’s no one in the world you hate right now more than Chris Hohn,” said Joseph Carlson (pictured), host of The Joseph Carlson Show, which provides guidance on stock purchases, on YouTube.
Hohn controls approximately $20 billion in various companies, and between $6 billion and $7 billion of Alphabet, in particular. This gives him “a lot of sway, a lot of power” over Google, Carlson said on Jan. 23.
“Ultimately management will need to go further,” Hohn wrote in a letter to CEO Sundar Pichai.
He wants Alphabet to cut more jobs.
Learn more here about Hohn as well as what’s happening at Google Cloud.
Channel people at 8×8, Intel, Google Cloud, RingCentral and more are among the individuals making waves this week. Channel Futures’ Channel People Making Waves showcases those who have made an impact over the last seven days. (See our slideshow above.) It’s also a recap of the most-read stories on our website.
Of the seven stories and people we feature this week, five of them involve layoffs in the tech sector. It’s an endless barrage of pink slips, as companies notify many employees by mass email. This era is a complete turnaround from the spending and hiring of just a few years ago. And some of the big tech companies are not even done, going for more rounds of layoffs. One activist investor who controls between $6 billion and $7 billion of Alphabet is encouraging the company’s CEO to go further. Read more about that in our roundup.
There were just two stories that made our list that didn’t involve job cuts. Both are about acquisitions. For one of those deals, it means modernizing the unified communications experience for customers faster and more effectively than either of those companies involved could do independently. However, we’ll have to wait a few months for the deal to go through.
That sums it up: layoffs and acquisitions. Join us next time for hopefully a different take on tech and the channel.
And, if you didn’t catch our previous edition, you can find it here.
Want to contact the author directly about this story? Have ideas for a follow-up article? Email Claudia Adrien or connect with her on LinkedIn. |
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