HPE plans to slice 5,000 jobs to cut costs

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) is planning on cutting 5,000 people from its workforce to cut costs in the face of growing market competition.

The Palo Alto based company plans to cut back up to 10% of its 50,000 employees starting at the end of this year, affecting people from the US as well as overseas, according to an anonymous source that tipped-off Bloomberg to to the cutbacks.

The job cuts could also potentially affect those in higher positions such as managers, and they come as part of a larger effort to save money within the company as Tim Stonesifer, the company's chief financial officer, said the plan is to save HPE $1.5 billion over a three-year period.

This new set of cut backs follows the somewhat recent division of HP, into HP Inc and HPE, which lead to the loss of 30,000 jobs in September of 2015 in a plan to save $200 million to $300 million annually by 2020, and the subsequent announcement in 2016 that HP Inc plans on cutting 3,000-4,000 jobs within the next few years.

HPE explained this is in an attempt to be more competitive in a changing industry, especially in the face of cloud technology, specifically those of Amazon Web Services and Google.

Additionally, chief executive officer Meg Whitman believes that by decreasing the divisions within the company, as it has by abandoning departments such as personal computers, printers, business services and key software units, HPE will become more efficient.

Earlier this month she stated that, "With fewer lines of business and clear strategic priorities, we have the opportunity to create an internal structure and operating model that is simpler, nimbler and faster."