Last Week's News, By The Numbers

Job Movements

Last week was a rough one for Cisco as the networking giant announced plans to cut more jobs as part of an expanded restructuring. Meanwhile, another major vendor, Hitachi Data Systems, said it's going the other way as it changes its business mission.

$93 million

The winning bid by HTC Global Ventures for troubled IT consulting firm Ciber, which was approved Friday by a bankruptcy court. The bid exceeded – by 86 percent – the $50 million stalking horse" agreement Ciber reached in April with Paris-based Capgemini when Ciber filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Ciber - No. 43 on CRN's Solution Provider 500 -- announced Troy, Mich.-based HTC's winning bid in a court filing Thursday. Capgemini's bid would have bought Ciber's $275 million North America and India business, yet was always subject to other offers. Ciber chose Capgemini as the "backup bidder" in the current transaction, according to the court filing.

1,100

Number of jobs Cisco plans to eliminate as part of an expanded restructuring plan as the networking giant reported that its revenue for the current quarter would be about 6 percent lower than previously anticipated. Cisco said those cuts would come on top of last year's 5,500 layoffs the company announced in August. Cisco gave a weaker-than-expected guidance for its current fiscal fourth quarter, predicting revenues to decline between four and six percent. CEO Chuck Robbins said the change was due to a sales decline in its service provider and public sector businesses.

$1 billion

Billings goal that security vendor Sophos has established by 2020 as it outpaced overall market growth in 2017. Sophos achieved double-digit growth across the board after closing out its fiscal year. In addition to hitting $1 billion in billings, the Oxford, U.K.-based company anticipates it will have operating profit of more than $100 million by 2020. In an interview with CRN, CEO Kris Hagerman said the predictions reflect the company's "continued confidence in our business and business model" after a "very strong set of numbers" for its fiscal 2017, which ended March 31.

300

Number of job openings at Hitachi Data Systems as it shifts its focus from traditional enterprise data center infrastructure to new IT initiatives that include cloud and the Internet of Things. Greg Knieriemen, chief technology strategist at HDS, said the company has hired over 1,200 people in the last year. HDS recently laid off over 100 employees in California while hiring over 1,000 more amid the shift. The layoffs are not that unusual in the context of changes in the storage industry, Knieriemen told CRN.

38

Number of developer and early adopter partners enlisted by SAP and Apple to test the companies' jointly produced iOS software development kit. SAP and Apple will deliver two new releases of the SDK this year and provide three in 2018, an SAP executive said. The partners included Accenture, Atos, Deloitte, Intersys, MindSet and TigerSpike. All of the partners have adopted the SDK and are using it as part of their development efforts, said Rick Knowles, the SAP general manager who oversaw the partnership with Apple and the SDK project, at last week's Sapphire Now conference in Orlando, Fla.