UPDATED 12:11 EDT / JULY 29 2016

NEWS

Microsoft will lay off 2,850 more workers in a fresh round of cuts

Though Microsoft Corp. handily beat revenue and profit expectations last quarter, Chief Executive Satya Nadella believes that some cutbacks are still needed. An SEC filing submitted by the software giant this week revealed that it’s planning to eliminate 2,850 positions worldwide.in a bid to free up underutilized resources.

A Redmond spokesperson told the press that about 900 of the employees who are set to be terminated have already been notified. All of them belong to Microsoft’s sales division, which first started undergoing layoffs last month after chief operating officer Kevin Turner left for a senior position at hedge fund Citadel LLC.

The restructuring is expected to continue through the middle of 2017 in conjunction with the ongoing workforce reduction at the company’s struggling mobile division. The unit has experienced round after round of cuts since Nadella took over the reins at Microsoft in 2014.

It started with the company terminating half of the 25,000 workers that came aboard after its purchase of Nokia Corp., a move that was followed by the elimination of another 7,800 jobs in 2015 and several smaller cuts some time later.

The company fired an additional 1,850 people from the group so far this year at a cost of $950 million, a tally that restructuring announced this week is only set to increase. Microsoft’s filing specifies that the 1,900 layoffs still left in the round to go will be split between its mobile hardware operation and the global sales force.

On the plus side, however, the savings from the move should enable Microsoft to invest more in growth initiatives. Nadella is putting a particular emphasis on the company’s  cloud business, which achieved a $10 billion run-rate last quarter. Its Azure infrastructure-as-a-service platform performed especially well and more than doubled sales on an annualized basis.

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