The redundancies come just two months after an EDS-led consortium won a $4.4bn IT services contract with the UK Ministry of Defence. The deal was its single largest contract win since 2002 and a strong indication that the company’s fortunes were improving in the country after it lost the Inland Revenue contract at the end of 2003.
The job cuts that the Plano, Texas-based company has revealed so far are minor in compared to IBM, which earlier this month announced that it would reduce its payroll by 13,000, mainly in Europe.
According to one Wall Street analyst, Hewlett-Packard is also considering a massive round of layoffs. Tom Sacconaghi, of Sanford C Bernstein & Co, issued a research note which said that he expected new CEO Mark Hurd to fire up to 15,000 workers in the next few months.
