TIS buy spurs Sterling to snip staff numbers

Software firm axes staff after merger with Texas Instruments Software to avoid overlap problems

Sterling Software has cut about a quarter of its recently acquired Texas Instruments Software (TIS) staff to eliminate duplication between the two organisations and to cut costs.

The move will result in 380 redundancies from a total of 1,310 TIS employees worldwide, with another 60 going from Sterling?s Applications Management Group (AMG) following the firms? merger.

A further 910 TIS employees will move to AMG, while another 20 will be redeployed elsewhere in Sterling.

Sterling Williams, CEO of Sterling Software, said: ?Unfortunately, when you merge two large organisations there is overlap and we had to make some tough decisions. This was the most difficult part of this project and we have made every effort to make the transition as smooth as possible.?

TIS axed 80 staff in February, halving its marketing operation, after reported losses of $27.9 million for its last fiscal year.

AMG will move its headquarters from Atlanta to Plano, Texas, and split into three divisions: applications development, information management and applications international.

The applications development unit will also move to Plano to house Sterling?s renamed Cool development tools and the combined TIS Composer and Sterling Key products ? Cool:Stuff.

Information management will look after Sterling?s Vision family, emulation software offered by the former Desktop Integration division, and the query and reporting tools sold by the former Data Access division.

The international unit will handle Sterling?s development tools outside of North America. Three units will sell into Western and Central Europe and Asia Pacific, but a fourth UK-based one will deal with the firm?s distributor operations in emerging markets.