Care in the Community

After Microsoft announced it would lay off another 3,000 people as part of expected job cuts, CEO Steve Ballmer sent an email to the rank and file. Here is that email, courtesy of Ina Fried at ZDNet UK's sister site CNET News.com:

From: Steve Ballmer
Sent: Tuesday, May 05, 2009
To: Microsoft - All Employees
Subject: Update: Realigning Resources and Reducing Costs

In January, in response to the global economic downturn, I announced our plan to adjust the company's cost structure through spending reductions and job eliminations. Today, we are implementing the second phase of this plan.

This is difficult news to share. Because our success at Microsoft has always been the direct result of the talent, hard work, and commitment of our people, eliminating positions is hard.

Today's action includes positions in the United States and in a number of countries around the world. In the U.S., affected employees will be notified directly by their managers today. In other countries, local leadership teams will provide more specific information about the impact to their organizations.

With this announcement, we are mostly but not all done with the planned 5,000 job eliminations by June 2010. We are moving quickly to reach this target in response to consistent feedback from our people and business groups that it's important to make decisions and reduce uncertainty for employees as quickly as possible, and so that organizations can concentrate their efforts and resources on strategic objectives.

As we move forward, we will continue to closely monitor the impact of the economic downturn on the company and if necessary, take further actions on our cost structure including additional job eliminations.

For those of you directly affected by today's announcement, I want to thank you for your contribution to Microsoft and assure you that we will continue to provide support as we did during the previous job eliminations.

And for everyone across the company, I want to reemphasize how much I appreciate the way you have pulled together to help the company respond to this difficult economic environment. There's no doubt that these are very challenging times. But together, we are making the right choices to ensure that we will continue to deliver great products and position ourselves for strong future growth and profitability.

Thank you for your continued hard work, commitment, and focus.

Steve

Just a quick post to let developers with a penchant for speed writing know that Last.fm, the online music service, is holding a hack day on Sunday, 14 December in London. The challenge is to build an all-new Last.fm app using the site's open API -- you can see examples of existing apps, from mashups to plugins, at build.last.fm. (Full disclosure: Last.fm is owned by CBS Interactive, which is also ZDNet UK's parent company ... we bask in the reflected cool.)

There's a prize of £1,000 for the best app of the day, provided by Last.fm and partner CodePlex (Microsoft's open-source project hosting site). Runners-up get Xboxes.

It all gets started in East London at 10:30am, and the day will pack in the hacking, the judging, the awards and then a performance by a 'Top Secret Act'. To find out more, and to register, visit the Last.fm Hack Day site.

There's a lot that IT can do for a small business. It can be a godsend in getting the work done -- think of how mobile tech can keep things moving when you're out on client calls -- and it can also be a real driver of growth.

But it can also throw up a whole new handful of problems. For a start, there's working out what exactly would give you the boost you're looking for. Then there's identifying what software and devices fit those needs best. Vendors are eager to jump in and suggest -- of course they are -- but they're maybe more attuned to bigger enterprises and not as flexible as they could be in recognising the particular demands of small businesses.

Next week we're launching a group blog dedicated to IT for small business, called Small Business blog (it actually took us a while to come up with that name -- don't ask.) We hope that by sharing experiences and ideas, you'll be able to get a better picture of what you need and what you could be doing with tech.

So give us your war stories, share your problems and suggest solutions. Just make sure to check the box that says "Small business blog" when you make your post. It's hard for smaller companies to connect with each other, yet your peers are the best people to give you advice. This is where you can tap into all that knowledge.

As promised, ZDNet UK is hosting a get-together where we give you a chance to meet industry experts and get their views on an IT issue of the day. We're inviting folks to come along to a breakfast briefing in London on virtualisation, with a panel discussion, question-and-answer session, the opportunity to network -- and a groaning buffet of food, of course.

Execs from Intel, Dell, VMware and Elinea will talk about whether virtualisation is living up to its promise, and about what can be done to make it more useful for businesses. The discussion will cover issues such as manageability and benchmarking -- and whatever you'd like to bring up.

Anybody who's interested is welcome to come along to the briefing, on 8 October at Andaz in Liverpool Street. Click here to sign up, and I'll see you there.

*UPDATE I'm told that every attendee will get a CERN Supra key ring, containing superconductive material from the Large Hadron Collider. If you want to know what that looks like, take a look at David Meyer's blog

I read every post made on ZDNet UK by our members, and every day it's brought home to me what a wealth of expertise there is out there among our users. Of course, it's the cornerstone of the community here--if we pool what we know, and share it, then we'll all benefit.

Now we're building on that to get some members with a shared interest into a room with a couple of ZDNet UK folks and an industry expert. We're inviting people to come have dinner and take part in a roundtable on datacentre energy efficiency, sponsored by Intel, at the Cafe des Amis in Covent Garden on 18 September. I'll be there, along with our illustrious editor Rupert Goodwins, and the special guest will be Dave Needham, head of datacentre strategy in BT's design and operate division. Here's what we'd like to talk about with you:

"Making good use of power management in the datacentre should be a simple decision, with cost savings, environmental credibility and datacentre design wins on the table. The reality is more complex. What do we need and what should we do to realise the potential of this increasingly important aspect of enterprise IT? "

We're starting small, so we've only got 12 spaces available and we're restricting it to IT Directors only. If you'd like to attend, the registration form is here.

And watch this space. We're planning a breakfast event in London on the same lines with more places and less restriction. I'll let you know more about that closer to the date. Until then, I'd like to hear from you: Are events like this a good idea?