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Cognizant Layoffs 2019, 2020: New Details Amid Digital Transformation Push

Cognizant is cutting 350 senior employees to bring down costs as the IT consulting firm pushes deeper into digital transformation services, the Economic Times reports.

The cuts are part of a larger company reorganization that Cognizant announced in October 2019. The company is one of the world's best-known IT solutions providers that offers managed, cloud, software development and professional services.

Cognizant declined to comment about the latest layoff chatter. Instead, the company pointed reporters back to details from the Q3 earnings call. On that call, Cognizant said it would reskill and redeploy about 5,000 of the employees impacted by the company changes.

During the October 2019 earnings call, the company indicated that it will increasingly focus on four growth opportunities: Data, Digital Engineering, Cloud, and IoT. The journey will involve a “variety of enablers that include sales and marketing, talent reskilling, acquisitions, and partnerships. The company is “streamlining its cost structure to partially fund these investments and execute its growth agenda,” Cognizant indicated.

Cognizant’s revenue was $4.25 billion in Q3, up 4.2 percent from the corresponding quarter last year. The figure was about $40 million more than Wall Street was expecting, SeekingAlpha reports.

The company's cost optimization efforts are expected to be substantially complete by the end of 2020, Cognizant indicated in October.

Joe Panettieri

Joe Panettieri is co-founder & editorial director of MSSP Alert and ChannelE2E, the two leading news & analysis sites for managed service providers in the cybersecurity market.