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Oracle cuts jobs as it tries to catch AWS in cloud race

Oracle sheds headcount as part of a reorganization to focus on its AWS-rival cloud business.

Written by Liam Tung, Contributing Writer on March 27, 2019

Oracle plans to get rid of over 350 employees in the coming months as the database giant attempts to transform itself for an enterprise world dominated by Amazon Web Services (AWS).

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As reported by Bloomberg, Oracle disclosed the impending cuts in a notice filed last week with California's Employment Development Department. The company will dismiss 255 employees from its Redwood City headquarters and 97 employees from its Santa Clara offices in May.

Some of the job cuts affect workers from the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) unit, the company's infrastructure-as-a-service offering for outsourced compute, storage, and network resources.

SEE: Cloud v. data center decision (ZDNet special report) | Download the report as a PDF (TechRepublic)

The headcount reduction is relatively small for a company that employs just under 140,000 people globally. The company says the intent is to focus resources on its cloud business.

"As our cloud business grows, we will continually balance our resources and restructure our development group to help ensure we have the right people delivering the best cloud products to our customers around the world," an Oracle spokesperson said.

Earlier this month Oracle reported that its fiscal Q3 2019 revenues were down one percent to $9.6bn.

Oracle founder and CTO Larry Ellison is pinning OCI's future on its Gen2 Cloud Infrastructure and Autonomous Database technology.

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Ellison, who would like to see AWS burn in hell, contends that Oracle's cloud is a better deal for the slow-moving but security-conscious enterprise market.

According to a report last week by IEEE Spectrum, cuts totaling 200 have also occurred across India, Mexico, and New Hampshire.

Oracle executive vice president Don Johnson emailed staff last week informing them that current organizational restructuring within OCI "will better align with Larry's vision of the business".

"It will streamline our products and services, focus investments on our most strategic priorities, and help us to more effectively and rapidly deliver the full promise and reach of Oracle's Gen 2 Cloud," wrote Johnson.

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