DataCore Sacks Some Sales Staffers

DataCore Software Corp. has quietly cut around 20 employees in the past few months, due largely to what an executive calls a "realignment of the business" to position the storage visualization software company for a strong 2004.

According to Ken Horner, DataCore's VP of marketing, the startup has around 160 employees today, down from a high of 200 two years ago. Horner tells Byte and Switch that about half of the reductions are the result of "evolution and attrition," with most of the rest resulting from the company eliminating its channel account managers.

"Over the past three or four months, we've been realigning our business," Horner says. "We've refined our sales delivery process. We had to let a couple of folks go."

Horner says the channel account managers were often overlapping with DataCore's direct-touch sales force. The account managers with sales experience were given sales jobs and the others were laid off.

"We want to eliminate the number of layers we have touching our partners and touching our customers," he says. [Ed. note: A case of inappropriate touching, then.] "The channel account mangers became kind of middlemen between our partners and sales group."Horner says the services provided by the account managers could be handled by the sales team and DataCore's marketing and customer service groups.

DataCore has announced a raft of partners and customer wins with its SANSymphony open storage networking product in the past four months (see Aerospace U. Picks DataCore, DataCore Gets Sirius, DataCore Strikes Aussie Gold, Klosterfrau Picks DataCore, DataCore Targets Japan Banks, DataCore Checks Into NJ Hospital, and DataCore Chalks Up NOX). The company, based in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., was founded in 1998.

Horner says the layoffs were spread across DataCore's global divisions. European sales are strongest in Germany and the U.K., so account managers in France and other parts of the Europe/Middle East/Africa area were given the boot. Horner says the Asia/Pacific region's focus is now in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan/China, while other offices also experienced layoffs.

"Culturally at DataCore, these types of actions have been frowned on," Horner says of the layoffs. [Ed. note: As opposed to those companies that smile on layoffs?] "We're a small company -- we've gone through a rough time as a company as well as a market, and we've done no layoffs [until now]."

Horner claims the moves will leave DataCore strong for the coming year."We're really well positioned for '04," he says. "We're shrinking in some areas, but growing in others. We're driving toward the point where we can control our destiny, from a profit-and-loss standpoint."

Dave Raffo, Senior Editor, Byte and Switch