Siemens Unit Plans Job Cuts, Replaces Top Exec
MUNICH -- Siemens Business Services GmbH (SBS), the money-losing IT services arm of Siemens AG, will cut 2,400 jobs over the next two years, ending months of speculation that layoffs were looming at the unit.
Siemens said last week that it's aiming to slash annual costs at Munich-based SBS by 1.5 billion euros ($1.8 billion U.S.), with the bulk of the savings coming from the job cuts.
Klaus Kleinfeld, president and CEO of Siemens, also disclosed during a conference call that the unit's 60 IT services facilities in Germany - its core market - will be consolidated into 20 locations. The restructuring efforts are primarily focused on the underperforming enterprise networks division of SBS, Kleinfeld said.
In addition to announcing the planned job cuts, Siemens named Christoph Kollatz to replace Adrian von Hammerstein as group president of SBS. Kollatz previously was head of the traffic systems division at Siemens.
• John Blau, IDG News Service
EDS Lays Off Australian Employees After Dispute
SYDNEY, Australia -- Electronic Data Systems Corp. has eliminated 106 application development jobs in its Australian operations, less than a month after the unit's employees rejected a new contract offer from the outsourcing and IT services vendor.
An EDS (Australia) Pty. spokeswoman said last week that the layoffs were "absolutely not" implemented in response to the union-backed vote, which threw out a company-proposed deal that would have frozen wages in exchange for improving some employee benefits .
The public acrimony between EDS Australia and its employee union is partly based on what the unit's executives regard as an unwanted intrusion by groups such as the Association of Professional Engineers, Scientists and Managers Australia in the contract negotiations.
• Julian Bajkowski, Computerworld Today (Australia)
Cypress Adds Workers, Chip Facilities in India
BANGALORE, India -- Cypress Semiconductor Corp. plans to invest 430 million Indian rupees ($10 million U.S.) to build a new office campus in Bangalore that will be the site of strategic product-design projects. San Jose-based Cypress said it expects to employ 600 workers at the campus by the end of 2007, tripling its Bangalore workforce.
Paul Keswick, executive vice president of new product development, engineering and IT at Cypress, said at a press conference that the existing design center in Bangalore is already the largest of the company's 18 design centers worldwide.
The Indian operation specializes in designing products such as Universal Serial Bus chips and static RAM devices, as well as computer-aided design tools. It also handles some of the company's internal information systems requirements.
• John Ribeiro, IDG News Service
Briefly Noted
SAP AG has agreed to acquire Triversity Inc. a Toronto-based vendor of retail software. SAP said the deal will help expand its IT offerings for the retail industry, especially point-of-sale systems. Terms of the deal, which is expected to close next month, weren't disclosed.
• John Blau, IDG News Service
LogicaCMG PLC, a London-based IT services vendor, plans to buy Paris-based Unilog SA for 930 million euros ($1.14 billion U.S.). The purchase offer is subject to the approval of LogicaCMG shareholders and relevant regulatory authorities, Unilog said. The deal is expected to close by the end of next month.
• Peter Sayer, IDG News Service
The European Commission has proposed that its member nations reimburse telecommunications network operators and Internet service providers for the cost of collecting and storing data to help authorities track terrorists. The proposal calls for companies to be compensated for doing data storage tasks that go beyond their current practices.
• Simon Taylor, IDG News Service
Global Fact
24.3%
Projected growth in overall revenue from sales of external disk storage systems in the Asia-Pacific region this year.
Source: IDC
Compiled by Mike Bucken.