Sources are telling us that some Oracle employees got pink slips on Friday. All of them are from Sun Microsystems' hardware groups.
Friday's layoffs hit employees in the "legacy hardware" units from Sun, particularly salespeople and some managers, our source tells us. Details are sketchy but like previous Oracle layoffs, we're estimating the layoff is tiny and involves perhaps a few dozen people.
This isn't a big surprise. One laid-off worker tells us that Oracle traditionally cuts in late April, early May because its fiscal year ends May 31.
The worker says that Oracle is trimming field technicians and other support people working with tech Oracle no longer wants to sell.
We've also heard that at the StorageTek unit, a company Sun acquired for $4.1 billion in 2005, people are being let go. StorageTek makes tape storage systems, which large enterprises use to back up their data.
Oracle has been steadily hiring more salespeople and sales consultants while "downsizing some of the groups whose job was to help them," Oracle CEO Larry Ellison explained in December.
Oracle wasn't interested in those types of business when it bought Sun. It bought Sun to create high-end "engineered systems," in which Oracle's software, like its database, is combined with specially designed hardware for fast performance.
Oracle is not alone in trying to rid itself of low-margin hardware. IBM is also supposedly trying to sell its Intel x86 server business to focus on more profitable engineered servers.
We reached out to Oracle about the layoffs and were told,"no comment."
After hearing about this latest layoff, Oracle employees working for those legacy systems have had a lot of fair warning. It might be wise for them to update their resumes.
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