Adaptec to lay off 100
In a move to shore up operating expenses, the company is shedding 4 percent of its workforce at its storage systems division.
As a result of the layoffs, the company is considering a one-time charge for the second quarter of 1999 that is estimated to be "several million dollars." The actual figure will be announced later this quarter, spokesman Adam Trunkey said.
On the heels of last month's resignation of company chairman and CEO Grant Saviers, the layoffs mark a change in business strategy direction steered by the new interim CEO, Larry Boucher.
Adaptec's core business consists of peripheral devices such as SCSI adapter cards for Intel-based machines that run Microsoft's Windows operating system and RAID hardware and software for midrange servers. The company will be refocusing its efforts on the latter sector.
The new strategy is in part a shift from a being a supplier of storage systems to building components for those storage systems, a more profitable niche for the company.
"We're getting out of the box business," Trunkey said. "We're abandoning storage systems."