Xmas blues for Newbridge staff

Newbridge Networks has been forced to make four per cent of its staff redundant as it failed to capture a share of the enterprise market due to problems with its UB Networks product range.

A total of 280 redundancies, 20 of which were made in the UK, were announced on 3 December after the networking vendor blamed the MLS 500 and the Shared Media hub ranges for a substantial drop in sales (PC Dealer, 3 December).

A representative at Newbridge Networks said: 'The enterprise market is slower, so some of the resources in that area had to be refocused.' She remained steadfast over the vendor refusing to can its loss-making acquisition, which it bought in January.

'There is no such thing as a UB Networks sell-off - it has become part of our company,' she said.

But she admitted that Newbridge had been looking at the option of selling off the UB product lines as part of a refocusing initiative, which the vendor is hoping to implement this quarter.

Steve Brigden, UK and Ireland marketing manager at Newbridge, admitted that there have been a number of hitches with the MLS 500 product.

'We promised Ethernet and Fast Ethernet switching cards to go with the MLS, but there were technical problems. That forced us to push back the delivery date, which is now scheduled for January 1998,' said Brigden.

However, a representative for Newbridge said the switching cards still had to go through a number of field trials, which would take the shipping date to February.