Many of you may have heard by now that Mitel announced a restructuring and an undisclosed number of layoffs. Mitel lost two of its top marketing people, which will be a serious loss for the company.  According to Mitel, there will be a shift to more regionalize marketing, providing local channel and sales support. The restructuring and layoffs appear to be a preemptive strike in light of the economic realities across the globe. According to Don Smith: the uncertain fiscal climate has led to “declining consumer and business confidence.”

And Mitel isn’t alone - rumors have been circulating that Nortel will lay off around 5,000 workers shortly. Motorola announced major layoffs recently, and according to the Wall Street Journal, the company “put on hold its breakup plans and outlined a second strategy to fix its troubled cellphone division. The radical restructuring, which includes 3,000 more job cuts and will halt the launch of many upcoming phones, raises fresh questions about the company’s future in a cellphone industry it pioneered.” Nokia has announced that it is cutting over 600 positions, mainly in marketing and sales departments. Cisco announced it will lay off 129 of roughly 1,200 Dallas-area employees over the next two months when it shuts down the Broadband Telephony Services operating unit. And according to GigaOM, BroadSoft has cut about a dozen positions in its sales, product management and engineering divisions, in both the Americas and the EMEA region, due to sales starting to slow, not just for BroadSoft but for other vendors as well. Sigh.

Fortunately not everyone is experiencing layoffs. Avaya did some restructuring lately and people were let go, but there were also lots of new hires, “Avaya’s New Focus“ (http://www.nojitter.com/blog/archives/2008/10/avayas_new_focu.html).

Overall, work still goes on, and most companies will still have to keep on doing what they keep doing - producing, selling, marketing, servicing, etc. Genesys just announced that Merijn te Booij will replace Paul Lang as Vice President of Product Management (Paul Lang recently joined LiveOps). According to Genesys President & CEO Paul Segre, Merijn will “collaborate extensively with customers and partners, as well as Business Development, Product Marketing and Genesys Sales Teams to determine product strategy, new business opportunities and product requirements.”  

While the economy is taking its toll, and we’ll be hearing about lots more layoffs in the coming months, hopefully there will be a silver lining.