HP to Layoff 9,000 Employees as it Streamlines Data Centers

The company announced Tuesday that it plans to spend the money to invest in a series of commercial data centers that will offer enterprise customers a more integrated platform on which to run their businesses. The initiative will also consolidate HP's data centers, networks, and applications. But as a result of the increased streamlining and automation, HP expects to eliminate around 9,000 jobs, or about 3 percent of its work force, over the next few years. HP has approximately 304,000 employees worldwide, according to a Fast Facts page on its Web site.

Unfortunately, that's the brutal reality of cloud computing. The savings that clients see comes from employees and vendors, as customers in aggregate buy less hardware and software and price competition on the service front races like a wind-swept forest fire.

As I've heard from one IT outsource firm after another, consolidation and utilization are the the future.