SAP plans a restructure that could see hundreds of employees laid off

SAP AG’s shift to providing cloud-based software will prompt a staff shake-up this year, with some employees laid off as others are redeployed, although overall staff numbers should grow, the German business software maker said Wednesday. Jobs will be at SAP’s traditional business that provides software installed on computers. However, it will need more staff for its Internet-based applications, said spokesman Christoph Liedtke. “There won’t be mass layoffs,” he said. SAP has roughly 67,000 employees. The proportion of SAP customers who access applications for accounting and employee-management through Web browsers is rising as cloud versions require less maintenance work than traditional software. SAP wants to become the world’s largest vendor of cloud applications for enterprises and overtake Salesforce.com Inc.