Thread regarding Oracle Corp. layoffs

Let me give you an alternative point of view - not my own, rather what I think LE is thinking (MH and SC do 't think, they just care about the short term cash comp). LE is 100% focused on cloud, especially SaaS and IaaS, catching us neither SFSC and AWS. Not he won't catch either, but as long as he can bretend that he might, he may be able to prop up the share price long enough. He's and old guy and so his perspective is not that long either. This is no longer about building or running a company, it's all about propping up the share price for the next few years.

Just adding to my post, there are a couple of things I cannot fathom. Sure, SPARC revenue is declining and has been declining for years, fair enough, Oracle lost that war, end of story.

But Solaris underpins ZFS storage, which is selling well enough. Oracle will certainly not let others just use ZFS if they kill Solaris, but they can't just EOL ZFS storage and not expect any backlash from its userbase, which may demand Oracle to open up Solaris and ZFS (the closed portion, not the CDDL one released with Indiana), and Oracle is always loathe to do that.

Next up, there's Exadata. Losing control over hardware means the next generation is very likely going to s--- compared to the current one (in terms of bang per buck, not overall performance, which may be better). I don't think Oracle can allow that to happen since it would make lots of room for system integrators that might once again have level playing field and may offer better than Exadata performance at lower price level.

Third, there's tape. This is the one I can't understand at all. T10000E was almost finished and close to be released.. While it would be underwhelming in ~3 years compared to LTO9, it would still sell well enough to ease transition to LTO. Same goes for new tape libraries, for which there is some demand (and which Oracle desperately needs to supports its existing userbase), but there were just too many delays to let them come to market. The biggest problem is the installed base. There's a lot of very powerful users that started off with Storagetek tape decades ago and that Oracle will simply be unable to just shake them off.

@OW5vme0-1ajs: It's something different. Oracle made back all the money they could on Sun acquisition, and as soon as costs started eating up all revenue, they killed off hardware and systems.

I can tell you that JF was meeting LE regularly at least as recently as a couple of years ago.

Anyway the whole this thing was total mismanagement of the entire organization IMHO.

I always wondered to what extent LE and his cabinet interacted with Fowler. I got the sense that there some strong interaction at the beginning of the acquisition and that wained away over time to the situation that the previous poster described. Was it just the case that SPARC outlived the usefulness that prompted Oracle to do the acquisition? That is enough of the customer base just migrated away from SPARC that it was no longer worth the bother? Is the development of x86 systems managed and tracked by LE and his cabinet at the same way as described by the previous poster?

for the op,

Are you saying 9 months ago, LE and his cabinet decided the death of HW/SPARC and they were panicking and it took them 9 months to execute that order? I don't think so, I wish they were micromanaging the projects closely and adding their inputs.

based on what I saw, there was total disconnect between Headquarters and SCA. HW guys cook something, a year or 2 later the guys upstairs act like they are surprised by what was being cooked and they either cancel the project ( like what happened in January) , do layoffs and repeat the cycle.

some projects were canceled because they didn't bring anything new to the table or not competitive, and they got canceled years after when they are almost done. If there was direct monitoring these last minute cancelations would of not happened.

I think things looked brighter after Linux on SPARC idea, after plans to moving into the cloud, after focusing on one project instead of 5. people didn't leave after January because they thought there is a way to success after these fresh new ideas. but the usual happened, the guys upstairs woke from sleep, asked what is cooking, tasted the meal, and they didn't like it, and decided to kill everything.

@Oracle of Oracle:

"What is happening right now was going to happen earlier. You're welcome."

Are you sure you want to congratulate yourself? I mean, yeah...it may seem like you did a public service but over the past 9 months:

• JF wasn't ejected.

• We still had our leadership with their fingers in their ears about the march to the cloud

• Ofer did his political BS storage/server split which solved zero problems and just introduced noise

• Everyone got stressed out wondering when, if, how the end would come

• Lots of people could have got through the cycle and been in happier new careers by now

etc.

Layoffs s---. I am not for a moment defending the company whatsoever. But I haven't met a single soul who's enjoyed this long, slow, drawn out death. To a man, they've all just wanted it to be done and over with (as much of the sentiment on here expresses).

So yeah, wow, thank you so much for contributing to dragging it out.

Holy f---, @KBEVoB1 has 160K views - amazing, whoever did this - hats off

@KBEVoB1 is a hyperlinked shortcut for https://www.thelayoff.com/t/KBEVoB1

@OW5vme0-1ijw I have not doubt Oracle wanted to get out of the SPARC business, but can you shed some light on why this whole process was so drawn out? Why not just cancel M8 along with S2 back in January and be done with it? Why the need to deny it? Thanks

@OW5vme0-1bup

That post actually prompted a slowdown in the process. I leaked way more info than they knew someone was willing to leak. What is happening right now was going to happen earlier. You're welcome. Not even joking a little bit about that, the top levels actually panicked. They issued official statements to try and deny it if you recall. How often does that happen when someone posts something on this site?

"Hardware teams being told to cease development. "

9 months ago nothing stopped, M9 was going in full speed. nobody halted anything.

s/Windows phone/Zune

I currently work in the cloud and what is described here is quite accurate. To the OP, thank you for the advanced warning; some of us are certainly paying attention and are making appropriate plans.

I worked on the cloud. Development is in a huge mess. Internally people know their jobs are going to India or just plain going away. Development groups are fighting each other for territory, in the hopes that they will be the last ones standing when everything goes. The fighting is intensely destructive as one group sabotages another. In all of the internal battles, the customer is the loser and once the customers leave, they're not coming back.

@OW5vme0-etn Perhaps you are not giving the Windows phone enough credit?

Oracle Cloud is the Windows Phone of cloud.

Our company builds solutions on top of Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. A customer recently asked if we would support Oracle's stack. I spoke to our development who laughed in our face. The said the Oracle cloud does not exist and even if it did, it would be terrible and the market is too small to waste valuable resources on. I wasn't surprised. This is reality and the smart investors know better.

I work in the cloud and it is not in good shape . Sales are not anywhere near where they need to be . Oracle's close ratio is very bad .

Haaa thats nothing. No body believed me when I sayd Trump will win. I was the laughing stock. Who is laughing now? The conditiin of Oracle they make us believe is like that NYT fake poll that was with her.

::virtual hand-ob::

Those whose income depends on cloud will be the first and loudest to mock anyone who suggests there is a problem.

Goes for anything really.

Most people are reactionary, emotion driven. Zero logic or research goes into their responses, especially when it comes to their well being.

"Everything is Wonderful!" is their song.

I do remember...I think they can't cut 100% because there is still a significant customer base on Solaris (shrinking, but there). They have to keep a skeleton crew to fix bugs because of contractual obligations. But I agree that most of us will be gone.