Hewlett-Packard is closing a corporate work site in Germany, laying off 850 employees.

In a statement, the world’s largest maker of PCs and printers said it will restructure its enterprise service business, which accounts for a quarter of the company’s total sales. HP’s will shut down its site in Rüsselsheim, Germany. HP has about 10,000 employees in Germany. The restructuring is likely to result in the loss of another 1,100 jobs there over time. The layoffs aren’t the first — and they won’t be the last — as the world moves toward post-PC technologies.

Those losing their jobs will receive a chance to apply for open jobs at other HP sites in Germany. HP took a charge of $1.7 billion for restructuring in its recent third fiscal quarter. Over time, HP plans to cut 29,000 jobs, or 9 percent of the company.

A HP spokesperson said in an email to ZDNet: “HP Enterprise Services has an aggressive plan to optimize its portfolio and its sales and delivery model, and to improve its cost structure, resource management and operations.”

[Image credit: Shutterstock]

Hewlett-Packard reported its biggest loss in its 73-year history Wednesday, as it disclosed numbers for the third fiscal quarter ended at the close of July. That’s a huge setback for a pioneering Silicon Valley company and the world’s largest maker of PCs and computer printers.

The Palo Alto, Calif.-based tech giant reported a loss of $8.9 billion ($4.49 a share) on a GAAP basis, compared with a profit of $1.9 billion a year ago. But after excluding accounting charges, the company hit its earnings prediction of a non-GAAP profit of $1 a share, or $2 billion, compared to a profit of $1.10 a year ago. GAAP revenues were $29.7 billion, down 5 percent from $31.2 billion a year ago. In after-hours trading, HP’s stock is down 3.6 percent to $19.20 a share.

With such a loss, chief executive Meg Whitman will face considerable scrutiny from investors, analysts, customers, and the company’s estimated 350,000 employees. The size of the loss shows how much cleaning Whitman still has to do.

“HP is still in the early stages of a multiyear turnaround, and we’re making decent progress despite the headwinds,” said Whitman in a statement. “During the quarter we took important steps to focus on strategic priorities, manage costs, drive needed organizational change, and improve the balance sheet. We continue to deliver on what we say we will do.”

Much of the GAAP loss is related to a write-off of the value of its Enterprise Services division, which has been weighed down by the poor performance of Electronic Data Systems business that HP bought for $13 billion in 2008. The weakness at HP is in lockstep with Dell’s own disappointing quarterly report yesterday. HP’s earnings will be watched closely, since the company is a bellwether among tech companies.

“HP has been in restructure mode the last 11 months, and now Whitman needs to flex HPs muscle and position in cloud, security, and big data,” said Patrick Moorhead, an analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy. “These three items are enterprise’s hot buttons right now and HP has the goods to provide unique value.  In parallel, HP needs to clearly articulate how they will keep winning in PCs, as they are under market share attack from Lenovo.”

Analysts were expecting HP to report a loss of $4.31 to $4.49 a share — or $8.5 billion to $8.9 billion — for the three months ending July 31. That’s part of the price that HP has to pay for losing to Apple in the tablet and smartphone wars, as well as sluggish performance in its enterprise group. PC sales are under pressure as tablets horn in on laptop sales.

After accounting charges, analysts predicted HP would earn 98 cents per share on revenue of $30.19 billion. A year ago, HP earned $1.9 billion, or 93 cents a share, on revenue of $31. 2 billion. HP’s stock is trading at $19.93 a share a share, giving the technology giant a value of $39.3 billion. By comparison, Apple is worth $615 billion.

HP said its after-tax charges amounted to $10.8 billion, or $5.49 per share, related to the “amortization and impairment of purchased intangible assets, the impairment of goodwill, restructuring charges, acquisition-related charges and charges relating to the wind-down of certain retail publishing business activities, including the previously announced charges related to the impairment of goodwill within HP’s Services segment, the restructuring program announced in May 2012, and the impairment of the purchased intangible asset associated with the ‘Compaq’ trade name.”

HP’s PC group (Personal Systems) saw revenues drop 10 percent from a year ago. Commercial sales were down 9 percent. Consumer was down 12 percent. Desktops were down 6 percent, while laptops were down 12 percent. Overall PC unit sales were down 10 percent. The printer group (Imaging and Printing) saw revenue drop 3 percent from a year ago. The enterprise group dropped 4 percent in revenue, and services were down 3 percent. Software was up 18 percent, and HP financial services was up 2 percent.

HP said that its forecast for earnings per share for the fiscal year ending October 31 will be $4.05 to $4.07 a share, at the low end of its previous guidance, on a non-GAAP basis.

It is the worst loss since HP started in 1939. Chief executive Meg Whitman is still coming up with plans to turn around the company, after a year on the job. One of her initiatives is to cut HP’s staff by as much as 27,000 over a couple of years, recording a charge of $1.5 billion to $1.7 billion.

HP is banking on a revival for its PC business as Microsoft launches its Windows 8 operating system on Oct. 26.

RIM is wounded, and predators are starting to pick up the scent.

RIM has attracted the attention of IBM, which may be interested in buying its Enterprise Services unit, a pair of sources told Bloomberg.

Enterprise Services is RIM’s bread and butter. It’s the link between BlackBerry devices and the software that manages them, and the unit generated at least $4.1 billion in revenue last year. It would take a pretty compelling offer from IBM for RIM to part with the unit, which is why the sale seems so unlikely.

(And if you doubt the importance of that $4.1 billion, consider that it’s almost the exact value of RIM’s recent market cap estimates.)

RIM isn’t saying much about the report. ”We don’t comment on rumors and speculation,”  Nick Manning, a company spokesman, told VentureBeat this morning. IBM also gave a “no comment” on the rumors.

While there’s very little to go on in the report, we do know that RIM CEO Thorstein Heins is extremely unlikely to go for a deal like this — at least at this point. Right now RIM is more interested in seeing how well its BlackBerry 10 devices do next year, so don’t expect any high-profile sale any time soon.

Photo: Shutterstock/Joanne Weston

No. 3 computer manufacturer Dell has agreed to acquire networking applications company Quest Software for $2.4 billion to expand its business-facing capabilities, the company announced Monday morning.

Dell has been in talks to buy Quest since at least May. The buy will expand Dell’s enterprise focus, with improved software capabilities in systems management, security, data protection, and workspace management.

“Clearly, Dell’s distribution, reach, and brand are well-recognized in the industry,” said Quest Software CEO Vinny Smith in a statement. “Combine that with Quest’s software expertise and award-winning systems management products and you have a very powerful combination for our customers and partners. With this transaction, Quest’s products and employees become the foundation for Dell’s critical software business.”

Dell will pay $28 per share for Quest, a 19-cent premium over its closing price of $27.81 on Friday. The transaction is expected to close in Dell’s third fiscal quarter.

Quest originally accepted a $2.17 billion bid to be acquired by Insight Venture Partners, but those talks apparently faltered, leading the way for Dell to acquire the company at a higher price.

Dell photo: Flickr/Dell

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Verizon plans to combine CloudSwitch with the Terremark IT services company it already owns. The company hopes the CloudSwitch software, which enables enterprises to easily move applications and workloads into the cloud, will help companies move over to Terremark’s services.

Specifically, CloudSwitch currently provides an interface so customers can port applications to Amazon Web Services, Terremark and Microsoft Windows Azure’s clouds. By owning CloudSwitch and Terremark, Verizon can assure customers of better security and control between CloudSwitch and Terremark. In theory, this could help peel some enterprise customers away from Amazon and Microsoft.

“The cloud market is a rapidly growing opportunity, with very real benefits both for our business customers and the consumers they serve,” said Bob Toohey, president of Verizon’s global enterprise unit, in a statement.

CloudSwitch previously earned $15.4 million in two funding rounds. In January, 2009, CloudSwitch raised $7.4 million in first-round funding from the likes of Atlas Ventures and Matrix Partners. The company then grabbed another $8 million in its second round in June, 2009. The company was reportedly in talks for a third round when Verizon approached it with an acquisition proposal.