In a clear sign of reorganization within the company, Microsoft has announced that it will be focusing more intently on its cloud services. The announcement said that Microsoft is reorganizing its global workforce to give more importance to cloud services than mere standalone pieces of software.

It’s not so much of a surprise due to many reasons. Firstly, its cloud business is doing amazingly well and has exceeded all expectations. At the same time, revenue from its traditional businesses has slowed down. Putting all this together, cloud is definitely the future of this company, so it’s only right that it focuses its resources on the most profitable sections.

Secondly, reorganization has been taking place in fairly frequent intervals since Satya Nadella took over as the CEO in 2014. Through his visionary ideas, he has been able to make Microsoft a key player in the cloud. At the same time, it has also necessitated many structural changes and Nadella has been doing it to improve the overall efficiency of the organization.

However, this is not good news for many employees who work here. According to a report by The Wall Street Journal, Microsoft plans to cut down thousands of jobs as a part of this latest reorganization. Most of these jobs are likely to be on the sales side.

Though the exact numbers and the locations where the layoffs will happen is not yet clear, it is worrying to some extent because economies of the U.S and other Western countries is slowly stabilizing after the 2008 financial crisis. Even unemployment rates are one of the lowest in a decade. Considering these improvements in the economy, it’s a spot of bother if Microsoft embarks on any mass layoff.

Also, countries like India and China are facing an economic slowdown, so if the layoffs happen here, it could again create an unpleasant effect.

Microsoft though expects no huge impact on its business on a day-to-day business. So, we’ll have to wait and see the impact these layoffs will have on economies and maybe even the IT industry as a whole.

But one thing that we can infer is the growing might of cloud. All major companies believe that we’re moving into a new phase of technology that is likely to be dominated by cloud, artificial intelligence and machine learning. In fact, many analysts and economists are already warning about spikes in unemployment that can come when machines start performing many of the mundane jobs currently being done by lower and middle class residents of a country.

This doesn’t mean machines will take over humans, just like what happens in Hollywood movies. Rather what it means is that the nature of jobs will change. Many of the lower-end jobs will be replaced by machines and robots and we’ll move higher up to create robots or even do other things that’ll drastically improve the overall quality of our lives.

In this sense, there’s much to look forward to, even if Microsoft and others layoff people now.

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