IBM plans to cut about 10,000 jobs, or 20% of its staff, in Europe as it prepares to spin-off its lagging legacy business units, and reorient itself as a hybrid-cloud powerhouse. 

The massive job cuts, which were first reported by Bloomberg based on conversations IBM had with labor representatives in Europe earlier this month, will impact employees in the United Kingdom, Germany, Poland, Slovakia, Italy, and Belgium. 

“Our staffing decisions are made to provide the best support to our customers in adopting an open hybrid cloud platform and [artificial intelligence] capabilities. We also continue to make significant investments in training and skills development for IBMers to best meet the needs of our customers,” IBM said in a statement.

The major workforce reduction comes less than two months after IBM CEO Arvind Krishna announced plans to ditch IBM’s Managed Infrastructure Services and Global Technology Services business units into a separate company in a bid to allow the company to be “laser-focused” on the hybrid cloud market. 

Job losses will hit hardest at these units, a move obviously intended to cut costs prior to the separation from IBM proper, which the company hopes to complete before the end of 2021.

The company’s $34 billion Red Hat acquisition is a bright spot amid ongoing struggles tied to the COVID-19 pandemic and internal upheaval brought on by Krishna’s determination to remake IBM swiftly. Since that deal closed last year, Red Hat has repeatedly been the shining star of IBM’s financial performance.

“Client buying needs for application and infrastructure services are diverging, while adoption of our hybrid cloud platform is accelerating,” Krishna said last month. “Now is the right time to create two market-leading companies focused on what they do best. IBM will focus on its open hybrid cloud platform and AI capabilities.”

Despite some victories, IBM has continued to struggle as it works through integration plans and continues to be troubled by complex platforms tied to its legacy operations, Gartner concluded in a recent report. IBM’s revenues were down nearly 3% year over year to $17.6 billion during its third-quarter 2020 results. Conversely, IBM’s Red Hat operations posted a 17% year-over-year increase in revenues, which helped IBM’s overall cloud revenues surge 19% to $6 billion during the quarter.

Krishna took over as CEO in April after most recently serving as SVP for cloud and cognitive software at IBM, and has wasted little time in making his mark on the company. As the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic began to take off, IBM reportedly cut thousands of jobs in May. And now, in the span of the last seven weeks, Krishna revealed his plans to split IBM in half and cut about 10,000 employees from its workforce.

IBM expects its latest round of job cuts to be completed by mid-2021, according to Bloomberg.