VMware cuts a small percentage of employees

The VMware enterprise software company confirmed Tuesday that it had laid off a small percentage of employees.

The move comes two years after the Dell subsidiary removed approximately 800 employees.

"We can confirm that there has been a small power reduction at VMware this week," a VMware spokesperson told CNBC in an email. "Workforce rebalancing is an ongoing activity across VMware's business and geographies to ensure that resources are aligned with business goals and customer needs." We continue to recruit from strategic areas for the company.

It is unclear how many people were affected by the move; the spokesperson would not specify, or identify places where there were cuts. By early 2016, VMware had nearly 20,000 employees.

VMware sells software that allows companies to run multiple applications on each server in their data centers. It faces competition from Cisco, IBM and Microsoft.

Over the past two years, VMware has focused on public cloud infrastructure, particularly when it decided to make its software available on Amazon Web Services, the market leader. The tools became available in August, although CEO Pat Gelsinger said in November that he did not expect them to be important "this year or next year".

VMware beat analysts' estimates for the quarter ended November 3, with earnings per share of $ 1.34, excluding certain items, of $ 1.98 billion, up 11% year-over-year. The VMware stock has grown more than 60% over the past year .