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April Fool’s Day is a bad day to announce a major strategy shift. Case in point: Dell announced today that the company will slash US$3 billion in costs over the next 3 years, according to PC World via Yahoo and Engadget. This includes eliminating 5600 jobs on top of an previously announced cut of 3200 positions.

Dell will also close a desktop computer manufacturing plant in its headquarters city of Austin, which accounts for 900 of the lost jobs according to the Austin American-Statesman. Desktop computer sales continue to flag while Dell shipped 37% more portables during the fiscal year.

Dell Financial Services may be sold or spun off. DFS provides consumer and business financing for computer hardware and software sold through Dell’s direct sales channels.

Dell is preparing ahead, as computer hardware manufacturers tend to lead the economy out of recessions.

As expected, AT&T is benefiting from its exclusive relationship with Apple. The telecommunications company reported on Thursday that it has 2 million iPhone customers. iPhone monthly sales figures doubled in December.

As the US market becomes saturated with mobile phone users, the telcos rely more on getting customers and corporate accounts to switch providers. As I discussed on 13 January and 11 January 2008, carriers and manufacturers are rushing new handsets and features to market. it’s a new level of competitive rivalry, and the timing is good for consumers and corporate accounts. Stockholders may suffer, however.

Yesterday I mentioned Sun’s acquistion of MySQL, a leading open source database company. BusinessWeek published an article about Oracle’s acquistion of middleware vendor BEA Systems. That deal has been in the works for a year, according to IT-Director.com.

Shane Schick’s follow-up on the Oracle deal is a nice overview of why CXOs should care about middleware. Middleware is a translation layer that helps data move between different software packages and computer systems. Without middleware, e-commerce just doesn’t work very well.

Many companies have to link heterogenous information systems within their value chain. Even more companies have to link their value chains with those of their suppliers and customers, which means even more heterogeneity.

Oracle has a healthy chunk of the financial services middleware market. BEA provides access to other sectors, including telecommunications,where Oracle has not been competitive.

However, Oracle will have to spend time pruning and consolidating the combined product lines. Time may not be on their side, given the growing signs of economic recession in North America.

Amidst all of these developments, we should not forget that middleware and database software are important parts of data security. Cory Doctorow has described his radical view that data breaches are as bad as toxic waste and nuclear accidents. He has a good point – the effects might last for decades, and the companies that leaked the data might not bear the true costs.