There is already news hitting the wire that Microsoft is planning to layoff 15000 people around the globe roughly 17% of its workforce.

This layoff is unlike the one’s happening around the industry, the reason may be the same but the consequences will have industry wide repercussions! Why?

1. Microsoft is a product company, so what will the IT support companies do if they don’t have enough products that need support being rolled out?
2. According to IDC survey, Microsoft has the largest ecosystems of all the IT providers, which statistically translates into 14 million people using the software at their workplace in some form and financially for every 1 USD of Microsoft revenues ist direct partners make around USD 8. Mind you that’s just its direct partners not the next layer ones!
3. Some estimate that Microsoft has about 40% of the IT support industry!

Microsoft has already stopped hiring new workforce for some its divisions like X-Box and Zune. Job cuts would mean low R& D budget, lesser rollouts which would affect the entire partner hierarchical ecosystem which has over years been able to capitalize on the large monopoly that the brand has managed to establish.

But there is light, one man’s loss is another man’s gain! Some medium level brands could consolidate its position and also this could be seen as a period for use of Open source systems.

Filed under: technology