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Microsoft Plans to Replace Laid-Off Salespeople With Technical Roles

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Microsoft’s latest round of layoffs come as the company revises its strategy for selling artificial intelligence tools amid increasing competition from OpenAI and Google, according to sources familiar with the plans and internal documents.

The company’s recent job cuts included thousands of salespeople, the people said, and largely targeted traditional salespeople that the company intends to replace with more technical salespeople to better sell AI tools.

Microsoft on July 2 said it plans to lay off less than 4% of its workforce, which would be around 9,000 people. The company typically makes changes to its workforce around this time of year as July 1 marks a new fiscal year, but this year’s layoffs are significant as the company cuts costs to make up for massive spending on AI.

Microsoft plans to replace many traditional salespeople, often called “specialists” internally, with “solutions engineers” who can show customers actual demos earlier on in the sales process, the people said.

Microsoft confirmed the company is replacing some specialist roles with solutions engineers to increase the technical and industry understanding among its salesforce, and plans to hire more salespeople outside its headquarters to get more sellers out in the field.

The company has received feedback from customers that they had to engage with too many salespeople before getting down to the technical details and demos. “The customer wants Microsoft to bring their technical people in front of them quickly,” one of the people said. “We need someone who is more technical, much earlier in the cycle.”

The changes come as Microsoft faces increasing competition for enterprise customers in AI. Microsoft has an advantage in that many large companies already use its other tools, but many of those companies’ employees want the more well-known ChatGPT.

The sales cuts are tied to a plan to simplify how Microsoft sells AI, detailed internally earlier this year.

In a memo to the sales organization the day before the layoffs were announced, Microsoft sales chief Judson Althoff laid out a vision to revamp the organization.

Althoff called for “continued agility” and “reinventing Microsoft and MCAPS” to become “the Frontier AI Firm,” and outlined the five priorities of the sales organization, including to “establish a Copilot on every device and across every role.”

Althoff also internally unveiled plans in April to slash the number of the sales team’s “solutions areas” by half during the next fiscal year, which starts July 1. BI obtained copies of slides from his presentation.

Microsoft previously had six solutions areas: Modern work, Business Applications, Digital & App Innovation, Data & AI, Azure Infrastructure, and Security. Beginning July 1, these areas were set to be combined into three: AI Business Solutions, Cloud & AI Platforms, and Security, according to those slides.

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Hard-hit families hail £1 school uniform sale in Wigan

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Jasmine DuFraisse

BBC News Manchester

Jasmine DuFraisse/BBC Shoppers at the £1school uniform saleJasmine DuFraisse/BBC

The first sale was in Wigan this week

Families have welcomed a charity-run £1 school uniform sale, saying “every little bit helps” with increasing costs of living.

Rebuild with Hope launched the initiative this week, with more pop-ups to take place across Greater Manchester throughout the year.

Cath Potts said she came to buy uniforms at the sale to “keep the cost down” for her daughter who was starting school in September.

“Every little bit helps, and it helps [the money] go towards something else for the kids instead,” she told BBC Radio Manchester.

Shopper Sandra Turton, who chanced upon the sale in Wigan, said it was “absolutely brilliant”.

“I’ve got shirts and trousers for a 14-year-old, which usually cost £20 a pair at £2 for two pairs,” she said.

She added: “Children grow so quickly and uniforms are so expensive.”

Jasmine DuFraisse/BBC Sandra Turton is wearing glasses, has short grey hair and is wearing a pink top with a black cardigan.Jasmine DuFraisse/BBC

Sandra Turton says school uniforms are usually very expensive

Louise Atherton, chief executive and founder of Rebuild With Hope said the initiative was inspired by the charity’s work in disadvantaged communities where “people can’t afford the basics any more”.

The charity was also hosting similar projects in Runcorn and Wrexham.

Ms Atherton said: “We had a lot of uniforms donated to us, but a lot of families didn’t want charity they felt better if they paid for the time so we launched this sale.”

Jasmine DuFraisse/BBC Louise Atherton has brown greying hair and is in a blue top in front of a rail school uniform shirtsJasmine DuFraisse/BBC

Louise Atherton says the response has been brilliant

She said at least 2,000 families had benefited, buying an average of five or six items meaning they had sold thousands of garments and shoes so far.

Ms Atherton added: “I think it is brilliant what has happened – not only have we been able to help families but it has also raised the profile of the charity.”



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Trump threatens extra 10% tariff on nations that side with Brics

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US President Donald Trump says countries that side with the polices of the Brics alliance that go against US interests will be hit with an extra 10% tariff.

“Any country aligning themselves with the Anti-American policies of BRICS, will be charged an ADDITIONAL 10% tariff. There will be no exceptions to this policy,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform on Sunday.

His comments came after Brics members criticised his tariff policies as well as proposing reforms to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and how major currencies are valued.

Trump has long criticised Brics – an alliance designed to boost member nations’ standing on the international stage to challenge the US and Western Europe.

Last year, the list of Brics members expanded beyond Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa to include Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The bloc is said to represent more than half of the world’s population.

Brics leaders, who started a meeting in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil this weekend, have called for reforms to global institutions and positioned the alliance as a platform for diplomacy amid escalating trade conflicts and geopolitical tensions.



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Exabeam Nova Launches AI Strategy Agent to Empower CISOs with Business Insights

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Exabeam, a global leader in intelligence and automation for security operations, announced a major expansion of its integrated multi-agent AI system Exabeam Nova that now equips security leaders with a real-time strategic planning engine and boardroom communication tool. 


The Exabeam Nova Advisor Agent is the industry’s first AI capability designed to turn security data into a strategy that CISOs can defend in the boardroom. Translating complex security metrics into business-relevant terms has been a long-standing challenge, making it difficult to demonstrate risk reduction, prove the value of security investments, and show measurable progress. The new Exabeam Nova Advisor Agent solves that problem.


Exabeam Nova is now the only agentic AI that empowers security leaders to:


  • Build Strategic Plans: Automatically generate data-backed roadmaps using daily posture assessments, MITRE ATT&CK coverage, and organizational security data.

  • Communicate with the Executive Team and Board: Generate boardroom-ready summaries that reframe technical metrics into business outcomes, enabling leadership to understand progress, support investment decisions, and evaluate ROI.

  • Identify and Prioritize Gaps: Uncover issues like missing log sources, misconfigurations, and ineffective threat detection content that weakens security posture.

  • Run What-If Analysis: Simulate adjustments or additions to security tooling and detection capabilities to evaluate how proposed actions close gaps and improve security posture.

  • Track and Improve Maturity: Benchmark security posture daily, monitor measurable improvements, and align security operations with long-term organizational goals.


With the addition of the Exabeam Nova Advisor Agent, Exabeam Nova now includes six agents purpose-built to automate decisions, streamline investigations, and deliver continuous benchmarking of program effectiveness with clear, prioritized recommendations to drive improvement. Embedded into the foundation of the New-Scale Security Operations Platform, Exabeam Nova is deeply integrated into the complete threat detection, investigation and response (TDIR) workflow. Unlike vendors that bolt AI onto outdated infrastructure, Exabeam Nova was developed from the ground up as a coordinated system of agents, each aligned to a real-world SOC function to increase productivity and efficiency.


Delivering Meaningful Value for Customers


Within 90 days of launch, Exabeam Nova users report five-times faster investigations with improved accuracy. Users overwhelmingly cite the ability to work smarter and prove the business impact of their security programs as Exabeam Nova’s greatest value.


Steve Wilson, Chief AI and Product Officer at Exabeam


AI in cybersecurity has been mostly about analyzing and responding to alerts, but that’s not enough anymore. Exabeam Nova has expanded to become something larger. It’s the first and only AI system that includes an agent built for the CISO. Exabeam Nova doesn’t just tell security leaders where they stand, it diagnoses where they’re at-risk, maps a plan to improve, and arms leaders with the facts to explain decisions to their executive team and board


Chris O’Malley, CEO of Exabeam


We’re more focused than ever on delivering intelligent, outcomes-driven security solutions that scale with today’s threats, and anticipate tomorrow’s. Security teams are woefully underfunded and asked to do more with less, yet threats continue to multiply. Exabeam Nova is creating a historic shift in how SOCs operate — moving from reactive alert chasing to strategic process optimization. What we’re hearing from customers is clear: they trust Exabeam Nova. It’s accurate, reliable, and delivers the real, measurable outcomes they’ve been waiting for


Joep Kremer, Business Unit Director Cyber Security at ilionx


What really sets Exabeam Nova apart is how seamlessly the AI agents work together. From the moment an alert comes in, the case investigator builds a summary, the assistant helps us dig deeper, and the advisor shows how it all ties back to our overall posture. We can search in plain language, visualize trends instantly, and act on clear, prioritized insights — all in one platform. It’s like having a full team of experts working behind the scenes to keep us fast, focused, and aligned. Exabeam Nova isn’t just smart it is a game-changer for our SOC


David Andrews, Information Security Officer at Extreme Networks


We have been very happy with Exabeam’s openness to feature feedback, the quick release rates of new features and the overall usefulness and quality of those features. The new SIEM Security Coverage Analysis Report from the Exabeam Nova Advisor Agent, for example, has allowed us to identify strengths, weaknesses and gaps in our alerting while also providing recommendations on making better use of our log sources


Head of Security at a Finance Firm


What sets Exabeam apart is their ability to truly listen to customer needs and move fast to deliver solutions that solve our challenges. Their level of technical expertise and responsiveness is hard to find in this industry. They are building and delivering a roadmap that reflects what security teams actually need to be successful today. Everything about the New-Scale Platform enables us to take action. While other tools get stuck in investigation, Exabeam empowers us to move quickly and make decisions confidently. That’s exactly why I chose Exabeam and why I continue to work with them. They don’t just promise innovation — they deliver it, quickly, and with purpose



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