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SAP tightlipped on job cuts in cloud rejig bid

Yet firm reckons it'll be bigger by the end of the year

SAP is swinging the axe and cutting a number of staff as it re-shapes itself as a provider of cloud services.

The software biz would not say how many of its 66,750 employees will be laid off as part of its latest restructuring exercise, nor when the jobs would go – but called the losses “unavoidable”.

Yet the company claimed it would have more employees by the end of the year, compared to now.

“Our goal is to become simpler, more agile, faster and easier to work with. This is a broad company-wide effort to make SAP more effective and strengthen our innovation leadership,” SAP said in a statement.

“This initiative is about simplifying SAP for the customer, not about job cuts. In fact our plan is that we will have more employees at the end of 2014 than at the beginning of the year. While we cannot avoid restructuring efforts in certain areas we will continue to invest in our innovation leadership and become the cloud company."

The statement follows word of looming redundancies from Bloomberg.

The job cuts will be SAP’s first reduction since 3,000 jobs went under former chief executive Leo Apotheker.

They come as co-chief executive Bill McDermott prepares on May 21 to be approved as the company’s sole CEO at its annual general meeting.

Ahead of McDermott's ascension SAP has lost Vishal Sikka, executive board member for products and innovation, who led Hana - he left for "personal reasons" - and cloud president Shawn Price, who was in post for just four months and whose functions will now be spread among different executives. ®

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