Enterprise cloud services company Skytap is laying off 25 employees, or around 12 percent of its workforce, in an effort to “optimize” its operations, the company said Wednesday. The cuts came across the business and come less than two weeks after the appointment of Bradley Schick as CEO, who replaced longtime leader Thor Culverhouse.
This is the second round of layoffs in less than a year for Seattle-based Skytap, which also cut 25 jobs from its marketing and sales teams in December 2018.
Here’s a statement from Schick sent to GeekWire:
“Skytap has all the elements of success, we have a strong team, a differentiated product with clear market demand, solid revenue from a list of marquee customers, and expanding partnerships. While difficult, the changes today allow us to move forward with our vision of unlocking the potential of the cloud for businesses with legacy systems.”
The executive team and I have immense respect for the people who have been impacted today and the contributions they have made at Skytap. We are excited about the opportunities in front of us as we continue to build revenue through IBM and get ready to announce a new cloud partnership.”
Schick was unavailable to answer follow-up questions about the job cuts and the company’s future.
Skytap helps companies such as NBCUniversal and GE Healthcare migrate legacy systems to the cloud. It has shifted its focus toward working with other cloud companies rather than hosting customers on its own cloud.
Skytap recently made the IBM i operating system available on its public cloud, and it also supports AIX and Linux.
The company, founded in 2007, employed around 200 people prior to the layoffs and has raised $109.5 million in funding. Backers include Goldman Sachs, Insight Venture Partners, Madrona Venture Group, Ignition Partners, OpenView Capital, W Capital Partners, WRF Capital, and others. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos also invested in the company in its early days.
Schick was previously the CTO at Skytap, where he has worked for the past nine years. Prior to joining the company, he founded Wegos, a web application startup, and was a manager at Microsoft.
Culverhouse joined Skytap in 2013 and was a finalist for EY’s Entrepreneur of the Year award in 2016. He previously worked at Tektronix, IBM, Interwoven, SeeBeyond, Stratavia, and HP.
