Dive Brief:

• Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) reportedly laid off a number of North American-based employees Tuesday.
• HPE spokeswoman Meghan Fintland acknowledged in an email to Geekwire that “previously announced restructuring changes took place today.”
• According to a tweet posted by a senior engineering manager for HPE, many of those affected were part of a team producing Stackato, a service that enables developers to create applications that run on private, hybrid or public clouds.

Dive Insight:

The layoffs in the Stackato may indicate HPE is further retreating from the ultra-competitive cloud market amidst tough competition from AWS and Microsoft. Last year, HPE pulled the plug on its Helion hybrid cloud offering. In August, Bill Hilf, HPE’s current cloud leader, announced he was leaving the company to "pursue other opportunities."

CEO Meg Whitman has worked to better focus HPE on enterprise sales and to get out of slow growth areas since HP filed to split into two companies last July. Last month, reports surfaced that Hewlett Packard Enterprise was in discussions with Thoma Bravo LLC to sell its software division.