Sep 20, 2001 : Verio to Slash 750 Jobs, Close IDCs

📅 September 20, 2001 - Internet company Verio Inc. (verio.com 👉 Total Reviews: 28
🙌 Average Rating: 2.2 / 10
👍 Good Reviews: 4
👎 Bad Reviews: 24
👈 Official Responses: 0) announced Tuesday that it will lay off about 750 employees and close several data centers.

The job cuts, which represent roughly 25 percent ofthe company's 3,000 employees, are part of a plan tostreamline operations and focus on global businessdevelopment, Verio said in a statement. The companydid not say when the layoffs will be executed. Aspokesperson said most of the cuts would affect U.S.workers in "back office" operations outside of Verio'sheadquarters in Arapahoe County , which houses about200 workers. Some offices, and about 25 data centerswill be closed, the company said.
"Many of these decisions are difficult ones and aren'ttaken lightly," Alain Andreoli, Verio's president andchief operating officer, said in a written statement."But to be agile in responding to businessopportunities in today's environment, they areessential."
Verio, which assists businesses in building andrunning Web sites, lost $777 million on revenue of$328 million last year. Nippon Telegraph & TelephoneCorp. (ntt.co.jp), Japan's largest phone company,acquired Verio last year for $5.5 billion.
Melanie Posey, an analyst with the Framingham, Mass.firm IDC, said Verio has developed with roughly 50acquisitions since the early 1990s. "That kind ofnever really got rationalized and that's kind ofhappening now," she told Associated Press. Posey alsosaid the company's announcement may stem from astrategy shift that began when NTT took over lastyear. She suggested that the company may want toreposition themselves as a global player, servingprimarily international fortune companies, as opposedto SMBs.