Hewlett Packard Enterprise to cut about 5,000 jobs

Hewlett Packard Enterprise plans to cut its workforce by 10%, according to a person familiar with the plans, the latest cost cuts as the business-technology giant combats increasing competition and higher component prices.

The cuts, which will trim about 5,000 jobs, are to start by the end of this year. They could be a prelude to more layoffs, the person said, as HP Enterprise continues its HPE Next initiative, a three-year plan announced in June to take out $1.5 billion in gross costs and shift resources toward areas such as research and development.

Chief Executive Meg Whitman has remade the company formerly called Hewlett-Packard, through a series of splits and divestitures including the largest breakup in corporate history -- which created HP Enterprise and a PC-and-printer business called HP Inc.

Hewlett-Packard had about 350,000 workers when she took the helm in 2011. HP Enterprise today has about 52,000, after several huge spinoffs and tens of thousands of layoffs.

This year's layoffs are part of a separate plan to cut $200 million to $300 million in costs during the second half of the year. Ms. Whitman has said that the retooling effort will continue with HPE Next.

"We are actually clean-sheeting both the operating model and the organizational structure to simplify how we work," Ms. Whitman said on an earnings call earlier this month.

Part of the new plan will be to decrease layers in the company's customer-facing organizations so that there is more accountability and decision-making closer to the customers, she said.

The planned layoffs were reported earlier Thursday by Bloomberg News.