Facing up to a much more competitive world in an age of non-proprieatry operating systems, Stratus Computer Inc is slashing its worldwide workforce by about 500 people, a daunting 18% of total employment at the Marlborough, Massachusetts company. The cuts will cost the company $20m against third quarter profits, $12m for redundancy pay and $8m for consolidation of facilities. The margin decline in the first half of 1995 was more rapid than we originally expected, and that requires that we reduce our costs more quickly than we had planned, the company says. It notes that it is at the beginning of a major new product cycle, having introduced its Precision Architecture RISC-based Continuum line in January, and promises new models early in 1996, as well as introducing a totally new hardware product line based on distributed computing principles, which will build on the company’s Isis distributed computing software and commodity hardware and software.
