Enterprise

VMware cuts a small percentage of employees

Key Points
  • A spokesperson confirmed layoffs this week but wouldn't provide numbers other than saying it was a "small" percentage of staff
  • VMware's software for managing computing infrastructure is now available on Amazon's cloud
VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger at a 2017 company event.
Source: VMware

Enterprise software company VMware on Tuesday confirmed that it has laid off a small percentage of employees.

The move comes two years after the Dell subsidiary cut around 800 employees.

"We can confirm that there has been a small reduction in force at VMware this week," a VMware spokesman told CNBC in an email. "Workforce rebalancing is a continual activity across VMware's businesses and geographies to ensure that resources are aligned with business objectives and customer needs. We continue to recruit in areas of strategic importance for the company."

On January 25, the California Employment Development Department disclosed that VMware had cut 159 people in Palo Alto earlier in January. The spokesman told CNBC that that move is the same one as the "reduction in force" he acknowledged earlier in the month. At the beginning of 2016 VMware had nearly 20,000 employees.

Among other things, VMware sells software that lets companies run multiple applications on each server in their data centers. It faces competition from the likes of Cisco, IBM and Microsoft.

In the past couple of years, VMware has expanded its focus on public cloud infrastructure, particularly when it moved to make its software available on top of market leader Amazon Web Services. The tools became available in August, although CEO Pat Gelsinger said in November that he didn't expect they would be material "this or next year."

VMware beat analysts' estimates in the quarter that ended on Nov. 3, with $1.34 in earnings per share, excluding certain items, on $1.98 billion, which was up 11 percent year over year. VMware stock is up more than 60 percent in the past year.