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WatchGuard trims staff
The troubles in the Seattle tech industry continue. Last week, we broke the news of cuts at Attachmate. This week, we've learned that another technology company owned by private equity investors, Seattle network security company WatchGuard, has laid off about 55 employees worldwide.
That equates to about nine percent of the staff, bringing the work force down to 546, said company spokesman Chris McKie.
The news comes even though company posted record breaking revenue in 2007 and 2008, with McKie saying that 13-year-old company has continued to grab market share from Cisco and Juniper as it expanded into new markets overseas. It finished last year with about $100 million in sales, he said.
So why the cuts? McKie said via email that the company "regularly reviews ways to optimize business processes for improved efficiencies and increased customer value." And he noted that the company added about 100 positions worldwide in the past year, which means it is still bigger by about 40 employees than it was at this time last year.
We've heard a number of senior technical positions were cut in the reorganization, including the job of director of engineering Joe Zipperer. That's led to some speculation that WatchGuard could be moving in a new direction, possibly as a systems integrator. But McKie said that is not in the cards.
"I can unequivocally assure you that WatchGuard is fully committed to developing the best security solutions - period," he wrote. "There is NO discussion or plan to be a system integrator. The company remains 100 percent dedicated to its heritage of developing state of the art security solutions."
Once publicly-traded, WatchGuard was purchased in 2006 by Silicon Valley private equity firm Francisco Partners for $151 million. It is best know for its Firebox line of Internet security appliances.
About John Cook
John Cook is co-founder and executive editor of TechFlash. He has been covering the technology beat for nearly a decade, writing about startups, entrepreneurs and venture capital, most recently serving as a reporter/blogger at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
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