Dell is hatching a plan to cut ten per cent of its workforce in its first ever round of lay offs, Client Server News claims.

The Texan vendor is expected to ditch between 2,000 and 3,000 staff locally, and worldwide, up to 4,000 people could be due for the chop, according to Client Server News sources.

Job cuts are anticipated across the board, but the axe will fall most heavily on "units that are not producing sales", the sources say.

Dell today declined to comment on the Client Server News scoop.

Dell is also quietly shutting down operations. Within the last week it closed the Dell Marketplace, a B2B online venture powered by Ariba and launched only last September.

Dell representative Ken Bissell blamed the closure on
"a lack of maturity in the B2B exchange market,". He declined to tell The Register how many jobs would be affected by the move, or how much cash the venture had generated or lost.

The closure was not announced publicly because Dell "didn't feel the need", Bissell said. He declined to comment if any other parts of the business had been recently shut down in secret.

The PC vendor is tipped to announce the redundancies before next Thursday, when it is due to report its fourth quarter results. Earlier this month it warned it would not meet targets for the period.

Client Server News is a weekly paid-for newsletter, published by G2 Computer Intelligence. The company's Web site is at g2news.com. reg;

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