OpenText, a Canadian enterprise information management company, recently completed a $6 billion purchase of Micro Focus, a British provider of mission-critical software technology and services. As OpenText CEO and CTO Mark Barrenechea welcomed Micro Focus’s customers, partners, and employees, the company also set out plans to reduce the combined workforce by 8%, following a widespread trend of cutting labor costs.
Barrenechea expects to save about $400 million with what it calls “cost synergies” that will help balance the overall workforce; while there is no official headcount, the number of employees is estimated at around 26,000.
When the acquisition was announced in August 2022, Barrenechea and company claimed the purchase would increase the company's total addressable market to approximately $170 billion. However, Micro Focus has been called a “graveyard for legacy software businesses,” due to its strategy of taking “mature” software and adapting it to work with new technologies. Barrenechea’s company could benefit from the addition of solutions for DevOps, cybersecurity, risk & governance, IT management, and other digital tools.
