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Oracle Corp has started to lay off employees in the United States according to various reports. The report also said layoffs in Canada, India and parts of Europe were expected in the coming weeks and months.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the job cuts principally hit staff at Oracle’s advertising and customer experience group, the people said. The group sells services to help clients analyze data about their customers and target advertising to those customers.
Oracle’s job cuts come as the company is putting increased emphasis on cloud healthcare services after recently receiving regulatory approval for its $28.3 billion deal for electronic-medical-records company Cerner Corp. They are hitting a unit that has become less central to the company at a time the digital ad market also is in turmoil.
The company had about 143,000 full-time employees as of May 31, according to its latest annual report.
Menawhile, Bloomberg reported that some workers were told that their positions had been eliminated, according to four people with direct knowledge of the matter. Junior sales employees as well as a division sales director were among those let go, according to one former worker who lost their job and asked not to be named to avoid professional repercussions. Rumors of pending cuts had swirled through the division in recent weeks, but management said the positions were safe, one former employee said.
The customer experience division provides analytics and advertising services. It has long lagged behind the growth of the rest of the Austin, Texas-based software company. During an event last year, Executive Vice President Douglas Kehring said the unit had “historically been probably a little more disappointing than it should have been."
The company “decided to reorganize" the customer experience group “and move on," a former senior manager of sales engineering, whose position was cut, wrote on LinkedIn. In a separate post, another fired manager cited the restructuring for the job reductions. Some marketing positions were also cut, according to LinkedIn posts by a former senior manager and group vice president.
*With inputs from agencies