NetApp embarks on annual job cull

Cloud adoption is still hurting NetApp

NetApp will be laying off around 500 workers across the firm as internal and external factors continue to weigh heavily on its balance sheet.

The data storage hardware firm followed up a brutal set of fourth fiscal quarter results that showed profit dropping off by 32% with the news that some 4% of the total global workforce can expect to be jobless by the third quarter.

NetApp expects to absorb a charge of between $25 million and $35 million as a result of the redundancies and Tom Georgens, chairman and chief executive of the firm, blamed two main factors for forcing the job losses: the general shift to cloud storage and NetApp's own major product overhaul.

The latter has seen NetApp shift over to what it calls Clustered OnTAP and Georgens added that large swathes of its biggest customers have shunned the move because they are waiting for newer versions that have the features they want.

Three out of three

"We underestimated the complexity associated with these transitions. That is entirely our fault, and it is up to us to fix it," said Georgens during a conference call, according to the Wall Street Journal.

NetApp has been wielding the axe to its workforce on an almost annual basis for the past couple of years after 600 jobs were lost in March 2014 and 900 back in May 2013 with the shift to the cloud having a disastrous effect.