NEW YORK — Hewlett-Packard said Tuesday that it will lay off about 9,000 workers in the unit that provides technology services to other businesses as the company consolidates and automates its commercial data centers.
The cuts will be made over about three years and amount to 3 percent of HP’s global workforce of 304,000 employees as of last October, the most recent figure available. The company said it plans to replace two-thirds of those jobs, hiring 6,000 people to boost its global sales and delivery staff.
“HP will not be providing geographical locations of the job cuts at this time as final decisions have not been made,” spokeswoman Jane McMillian said.
HP employs nearly 3,200 in Colorado, primarily at campuses in Fort Collins and Colorado Springs.
The company had about 1,570 workers in Fort Collins at the end of the third quarter, the most recent data available, according to the Northern Colorado Economic Development Corp.
HP has not notified the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment of any pending job cuts, which the company is required to do if it plans to implement a large round of layoffs.
The company said the job cuts will result from productivity gains and automation in the data centers, which are clusters of computers that HP’s business customers tap into to store data, run software and perform other tasks. Like most companies that offer such services, HP has data centers around the world.
Once it completes the restructuring, HP said, it will see savings of about $500 million to $700 million a year.
HP, based in Palo Alto, Calif., said it will take $1 billion in charges, about half of it in the current quarter and the rest by October 2013, the end of its fiscal year. The charges, which are largely for severance expenses, will be excluded from the company’s adjusted earnings results.
Standard & Poor’s equity analyst Tom Smith applauded HP’s latest actions, calling them the “next step toward efficiency gains” after the initial integration of EDS.
HP’s shares lost 43 cents, or 0.9 percent, to $45.58 on the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday.
Denver Post staff writer Andy Vuong contributed to this report.
