Upstart security software maker Access360 Inc. will lay off an undisclosed amount of sales and engineering staff after the company saw two major deals with firms based in the World Trade Center,which was destroyed in last month’s terrorist attacks,put off until the fourth quarter, a company executive said.
“It’s going to impact us across the board. We’re going to let go of some sales staff as well as engineering,” said Brian Anderson, Access360’s chief marketing executive. “We want to be proactive and prudent during this time.”
The two customers who pushed orders into the fourth quarter,both financial services firms,have found alternative locations and are expected to complete deals with Access360 in the fourth quarter, Anderson said. Access360 executives declined to speculate on what effect that will have on the firm’s fourth-quarter results.
The news comes as many tech companies grapple with crimped sales, exacerbated by the September terrorist attacks. Technology companies routinely close many deals in the last two weeks of the quarter,which for the third quarter would be the periods directly following the attack. Executives and analysts have expressed concern that tech customers would delay or cancel orders they would have closed during that period.
Access360 has been a venture capital favorite, with $82.5 million in funding from industry heavyweights such as Crosspoint Ventures and Oracle Corp. It develops software that determines who gets access to what on a company’s network. Customers include Oppenheimer Funds, Sony Electronics Inc., BP PLC, AOL Time Warner Inc. and E*Trade Group Inc.
Still, the company has been in a yearlong bid to balance its growth during a broader economic slowdown in corporate technology spending. In the past nine months, Access360 laid off a handful of employees after reviewing some of its segments and outsourcing some operations it used to handle internally.
“We’re trying to stay lean and mean,” Anderson said earlier this year. n
