NEC Australia restructure, sheds 153 jobs

Stuart Corner
Thursday, 26 March 2009 02:57

IT Industry - Strategy

NEC has unveiled the new structure of its Australian business which will see the organisation divided into four business units - Unified Communications, Managed Services, Network Solutions and Display Solutions - and the restructure of its R&D operation to focus on commercial ICT technologies for both the local and export markets. As a result some 153 staff will lose their jobs.

The announcement fleshes out one made in January when NEC Australia announced it would exit the whitegoods and consumer electronics markets with the loss of some 200 jobs (ExD 29 Jan).

Managing director, Wataru Takeuchi, said: "The move is in direct response to feedback from customers that recognises the quality of our products and our depth of market expertise, yet found the previous nature of the organisation difficult to do business with.

The Australian R&D group will be "consolidated into a single global development unit to focus on broadband access, mobile technology, software and global strategy, NEC Japan will reabsorb that part of the local R&D group that was outsourced to Australia."

NEC said the R&D centre would "still employ dedicated engineers and research staff. NEC Australia remains the organisations' global centre for broadband access R&D and the company is committed to supporting jobs in Victoria and across Australia."

Takeuchi explained: "The restructure aligns the R&D operation with our core business units and will continue to drive technology innovation for the business and government markets that have been central to our success for almost 40 years. It means that everything we are developing locally will directly contribute to innovation in Australia, for both the local and the export markets."

Under the new structure, the Unified Communications group will focus on corporate sales of unified comms products including the SV8000 IP communications servers; the Managed Services group will focus on systems integration and delivering managed voice, data, IT, unified communication and data centre services; the Network Solutions group will focus on "connecting software, systems and people together using our extensive solution and system integration capability," with an initial focus on "growing our activity in the health/ aged care, connected communities and education."

The Display Solutions Division will continue to focus on digital commercial displays, signage and projectors in which NEC claims to a market leader.

NEC said that all the business groups "will closely align in delivery of ICT solutions...[to ensure] that customers get the full benefits of the strengths in network operations, Applications Net [NEC's SaaS offering for small business application], Nextep and IT solutions supported across the groups."