Nearly 200 workers in downtown Raleigh will lose their jobs in the coming months as ShareFile’s new owner announced resignations five days after acquiring the local software company.
Massachusetts-based Progress Software Corp. the North Carolina Commerce Department said Tuesday that it plans to eliminate 199 positions at ShareFile’s headquarters on Hillsborough Street. These layoffs will happen in phases, Progress said, with most taking place in January or February but continuing until June next year.
Federal law requires companies to file a WARN notice for at least two months before conducting mass layoffs. Progress filed its notice on November 5, within a week of purchasing ShareFile from Cloud Software Group for $875 million.
“Progress acquired the ShareFile business from Cloud Software Group because we value the company and the culture they have created,” Progress spokesperson Erica McShane said in an email to The News & Observer. “To continue this success and integrate the business into Progress, we had to make some difficult decisions about the future organization, which means that not everyone will be able to stay with Progress in the long term.”
ShareFile is one of the Triangle’s most successful startups of the past 20 years. Founded in 2005 by local entrepreneur Jesse Lipson, it provides businesses with secure document management software. In 2011, Citrix bought the company for $54.5 million.
ShareFile continued to grow under its then parent company. In 2016, Citrix had about 800 employees in downtown Raleigh’s Warehouse District, most of whom were connected to ShareFile. Since then, however, Citrix has reduced its Triangle footprint. The company left its Raleigh office in early 2023 and scrapped a 400-employee jobs deal with the state later that year.
By then, Citrix itself had been sold to two private investment firms who folded it (and ShareFile) into a new entity called Cloud Software Group. In September, the listed Progress announced that it would buy ShareFile.
ShareFile currently has offices on the seventh floor of a tower in downtown Raleigh called Bloc 83. Progress has not indicated how many ShareFile employees will continue to work at the site after the cuts.
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