Rumors are a foot of a year long shift. Here is the plan. This is all runmors, but information is becoming readily available as those in the know leave Oracle and spill the beans. Instead of one massive layoff, the layoffs will be constant through out each quarter. It is a massive restructuring going on inside Oracle and it will take over a year to make happen. Jobs are being shifted and moved, so in most cases as you are let go, someone else will come in a new role or new department to replace your position. Some people may be able to transition to new roles, some will have to take massive pay cuts in a new department, so you have to make plans as to where to jump if your name is in the hat. You get 30 days to find something inside Oracle. Start networking now.
Sparc and Solaris began getting hit in January. It should be obvious that by the end of FY18 there wont be anything left of what was once Sun. What remains will literally be a skeleton crew of minimal support. Doubtful that customer buys SPARC cloud in light of all the layoffs and removal of Solaris 12 from the road map. Expect a formal announcement AFTER open world. Expect deafening silence until then.
Hardware is next, all hardware. Nothing personal but as sales decline, instead of doing a post mortem to determine how to save it, hardware is gone. Its not Oracle. Oracle never was a hardware company and has been burned by high costs of production and low profit margins. Expect all hardware to be scuttled. ZFS, Exadata, Exalytics, Engineered systems, ZDLRA etc... will exist only in the cloud. Expect cuts in sales and support. Engineered systems are a thing of the past. If it doesn't fit nicely in bare metal cloud its not likely to last. Exadata software and the software behind the engineered systems will be rewritten to run on bare metal fabric. No point in maintaining stand alone systems in addition to the cloud.
Fusion middle ware is toast. Its all going to be IPAAS, and expect some new revelations here as some major purchases are underway. Watch as M8 and M9 and IC4 and IC5 drop like flies.
Field sales is called "failed" sales. Expect massive decimation as numbers drop each quarter in sales reps and sales support. Your number is your death warrant, if you can't make the number you can't make it in Oracle. Even the ECAs will have a quota that determine if they keep their jobs. Pillars will be cut each quarter. Expect changes to benefits. Expect changes that demand uncompensated overtime.
The golden child BMCS aka next gen IAAS will be absorbed. Expect massive hiring and restructuring, also expect the organization structure to be shifted in Q3 and Q4 as this is where all the effort will be made.
OD will now start to get pressure to maintain the on premises sales to keep core revenues up. Expect some changes here as the college grads begin to get weeded out, and promoted based on results. Great churn is expected here.
Also performance is not measured as it once was. You can be an IC4 and IC5 and get still get a layoff notice in any department. A new method of selecting who to let go has been developed based on seeming innocuous metrics like how many times your badge is swiped, how many times you log in through the vpn and where. Simple answers to employee surveys may determine your fate. And... who gets credit for the deal. Its now a bunch of cronies at the SVP level and above that look at their metrics and play a ranking game. If sales missed its number (and this year will be a very rough year) the layoff game is played. Because of the time it takes to do the layoff the selections are made mid quarter. You might help bring in the deal... but too late to get credit, your name might have already been fed into the machine. The highest level SVP will have to jump through too many hoops to save you... it might not be worth the effort.
If you are in support or consulting you get to suffer with things way out of your control, if the sales numbers are down and there is not much work expect to be dropped like a bad habit. Its nothing personal its about keeping costs low while sales takes a hit as the shift to the cloud is made.
If cloud does not sell no one will be safe. Its that simple. Its not a blame game, its more like survivor island where the rules of the game are not known to you. Good luck as this will be one of the most difficult transitions Oracle has ever faced. Its not an option, executive commitment at the highest level has been made. These changes are here to stay. If the products are not ready and don't work its no excuse to not sell them. The difference is the customer can easily leave the cloud... sadly this burden falls on the CSM and sales to juggle until the stars align.