Thread regarding Oracle Corp. layoffs

Meetings did happen. RB is on his way.

Are you thinking you are safe because leadership was in customer meetings? Or because you have no idea (what leadership would be meeting where) ...or ... if the meeting took place today?

I'd say its all a crap shoot. One thing is for sure, Oracle wont tell you anything. They like silent deadly layoffs. No noise... just a stench that hits you when you least expect it. Then they play like it never happened.

I don't feel safe. I started my own company and I now develop software at home. I don't bother with Oracle work. Don't care what happens at Oracle, gonna draw a paycheck and hopefully a severance package too.

We've had leadership do media events in the past for product lines that where already completely dead. Look at the sparc m8 event from lat year. Oracle is shameless about selling technology it knows is already dead to customers. It's not about customer success, it's only about revenue booked for this current quarter and the next. That is how MH and SC run things.

Today is the day. Anyone know if this meeting happened?

Seems unlikely and probably a good indication that this rumor is bogus.

Today is the middle of the Modern Finance Experience conference in NYC. Lots of “leadership” attending there, presumably trying to talk to analysts, prospects or customers.

From th OP: “Fusion Apps management called into big meeting Wednesday next week (valentines day).”

Today is the day. Anyone know if this meeting happened? And what’s the result?

Gold news

Old news

Oh, they know how crappy oracle software is, that’s why they are selling oracle stock as fast as they possibly can.

If TK and the three stooges (LE, MH, & SC) did their own expense reports, they might understand the pain that is inflicted on their customers

Ditto to the post about getting our old EBS back to do expenses and procurement.

The new fusion cloud IS UNUSABLE. The fusion apps (read: oracle cloud) expense tool is a down right disaster.

Usability testing was never done, never mind that USER requirements WERE NOT even done. it’s a total abortion.

So true. EBS looks like Craigslist but at least the navigation makes sense and every action on the UI doesn't result in a long delay.

If Fusion is toast, can we get our old expense, procurement, and HR sites back? I never realized how awful FA was until we started using it internally. I miss the EBS stuff so much. EBS was ugly as sin, but it kind of worked. I thought all our customers were exaggerating about their troubles trying to use FA. They were not. Our FA stuff is simply unusable.

Yep, oracle’s share price and LE’s wealth is totally dependent on the false perception that everything is going well at oracle and the company is making great headway in the cloud. It’s a total fabrication supported by cloud washing, but that’s why the layoffs of some 17,000 people with much more to come is all hushed up. Lies and more lies that’s what oracle has come down to.

the original poster was not a fabrication.

oracle execs are seriously circling the wagons and attacking any and everyone who challenges their "position". Managing the perception of the public is JOB #1. Larry's bank account is at stake.

I think the original post was nothing more than rumor if not outright fabrication.

That said, anyone who has worked on Fusion knows that it's built on top of a pile of sh--. Constructing a large scale enterprise application with adf was a dubious choice 10 years ago. Today, it's market suicide and there's no way Oracle will ever catch up to or surpass its competitors with a spaghetti application built using crap tools like jdeveloper and ade.

So I can entirely see the company divesting its investment in Fusion. It would be a wise thing to do especially if it can be done in a way that doesn't admit to the market what an expensive multi-year failure it has been. Just don't expect to see it happen overnight.

Fusion apps is gone, the only question is how much at the end of this month, and how much will be gone next quarter. There may be one person left behind in each role in FA. Skeleton crew. This plan has been in the works for quite some time. This is happening for 3 well documented reasons:

1. Lawsuit over netsuite... have to show it was not just an over priced stock purchase by LE to benefit his bank account.

2. Netsuite is the cloud strategy for the future.

3. Oracle is targeting mid market and needs to prune competing legacy products.

http://www.siliconbeat.com/2017/05/10/oracles-larry-ellison-made-billions-by-overpaying-for-netsuite-lawsuit/

Under pressure from founder Larry Ellison, Oracle paid too much for NetSuite, and Ellison made more than $4 billion for himself and his family as a result, a new lawsuit claims.

Redwood City’s Oracle in July announced it was buying San Mateo cloud-software firm NetSuite for $9.3 billion. Ellison at the time owned about 39 percent of Netsuite, and together with his family about 45 percent, according to media reports.

In a lawsuit filed this week, the Southern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, a shareholder in Oracle, alleged that Ellison and his near-and-dear ones hauled in an abundance of treasure from the deal because company chairman Ellison had pushed Oracle’s directors to approve an inflated price, Law360 reported (paywall).

“The big winner was Ellison and his family, who used Oracle’s money to buy NetSuite … and gained personal wealth of over $4.1 billion in the process,” the suit claimed. “Ellison stood on both sides of the transaction.”

Oracle declined to comment on the lawsuit.

1. Its the future plan being unfolded.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/oracle/2017/10/05/netsuite-and-oracle-it-started-with-a-shared-vision-for-a-cloud-future/#57e3d8323ebc

It was Oracle’s founder and now CTO and Executive Chairman Larry Ellison whom Goldberg approached when his first company floundered. After struggling to find a system that would allow him to fully monitor business operations there, Goldberg told Ellison he wanted to start a new company. He wanted to build a software system that could help him monitor sales. Ellison, as Goldberg tells it, advised him to focus instead on accounting, then build out the front office and add a web store. Oh, and run the applications over the web, for those companies that didn’t want to manage systems themselves.

“He really saw it,” said Goldberg, now executive VP of development with Oracle. “That was the next computing model. The computing model for the next thousand years.”

Another reason for NetSuite’s success, Goldberg said, was the other part of Ellison’s advice—building software to run an entire business, not just a department. That structure helped to eliminate “the hairball” of disparate, loosely connected business applications that often held companies back, he explained.

That hairball of apps is now seen as fusion apps. Its getting scuttled and quickly.

1. https://www.cio.com/article/3101773/best-practices/oracle-buys-netsuite-what-does-this-mean.html

Question 1: What does Oracle's acquisition of NetSuite mean for companies that are looking to move their finance function into the cloud?

Overall, this is not a great development for companies that are in the market for new finance and accounting systems. It leaves organizations with less choice. NetSuite traditionally played in the midmarket space and competed with companies like Intacct, Infor, Epicor and other vendors of traditional on-premises systems. As Oracle began to develop its Oracle Cloud Finance applications (based on the Fusion product line), it originally thought that it would be selling to large enterprises. However, Oracle's success to date with this product has been largely in the midmarket space. This puts Oracle Cloud head to head with NetSuite. As companies look for "choices," they can no longer pit the vendors and products against each other. Less competition means less choice and less negotiating leverage. Fortunately, there are other competitive cloud-based systems that will provide options beyond sourcing applications from just one company.

Question 3: How will Oracle position its now five competing products?

Oracle now has five competing products: Oracle EBS, JD Edwards, PeopleSoft, Oracle Cloud and NetSuite (not to mention Open Air, a professional services solution that NetSuite acquired five years ago). Where will the R&D dollars be invested? Will the company have individual product teams to sell the various systems, or will one sales representative be able to sell all of the products? Will Oracle position NetSuite as its solution for midmarket customers and Oracle Cloud for large enterprises? How will Oracle position these products vis-a-vis those of competitors such as SAP, Workday, Intacct, Epicor and Infor in the small, midsize and large enterprise markets?

These are all excellent questions. ...most of its R&D dollars are in the cloud space. There will be winners and losers in Oracle's corporate structure, and it will be interesting to see how this acquisition plays out — and which products become favorite sons in terms of R&D and market positioning.

Since the moment revenue comes from customers.

Not much real revenue growth ever came from FA at all. Lots of stuff bundled into on-prem deals at the last minute (and offset by drastic discounts on the on-prem licenses). But FA was never able to stand on its own. This is why overall revenue for the company never changed much.

Sure, we'll continue to milk those dumb saps who were unfortunate enough to trust their business to such a garbage product. They will be paying us for virtually zero support for many years. But there is no reason to keep investing in further development. It's a dead end.

"once again, since when does oracle actually care about customers!"

Since the moment revenue comes from customers.

From the OP: "big scale layoffs targeted by months end. Its everything dev, support, sales you name it Fusion Apps is toast. "

So, this company is going to make a drastic switch by the end of February? The way it's described it will be like a flick of a switch and Fusion Apps will vanish. Good luck with that. Even MH, as moronic as he is, understands that you can't just force customers to drop their current setup and adopt something new like a NetSuite overnight. I get what the other poster is saying about a gradual shift--that would be the most likely scenario if this rumor is true.

Well, first of all, you seem to be forgetting that this is oracle we’re talking about, so who cares about customers? Second, oracle will just ignore all the FA issues so customers get fed up and do something else - once again, since when does oracle actually care about customers!

"So if fusion will be wiped out, what happens to the customers? Will they be switched over to the corresponding products in NetSuite?"

I'm guessing that it won't be "wiped out", but that no new major features will be added and the move to NetSuite and other product lines will be gradual.

Desperate times, it was always LE’s religion that product sales would not get a commission for consulting. Must be ducking his own little one to have change

Well how much real revenue does FA generate and how much real pipe is there? Sounds like HCM has none; WorkDay is better, is FA any better? FA Never was a good product, SFDC CRM is so much better than FA ...

Fusion Apps mid /up market is on its way to history. Enter Net Suite. Cheaper, better, modern, actually works.

Enterprise Fusion Apps is just a lumbering dinosaur 🦕 it’ll be gradually killed of cut by cut. Just watch. 🍿

So if fusion will be wiped out, what happens to the customers? Will they be switched over to the corresponding products in NetSuite?

I am not Mr. fake (old) news, but I am connected enough in the company to not believe that this thread is based on reality. There will continue to be targeted RIFs, but “Fusion Apps is toast” is an complete exaggeration. Where would any future revenue, cloud washed or otherwise, come from? PaaS and IaaS and the various acquisitions are tiny by comparison.

KADs do get paid on consulting, training, Cloud SaaS, Tech, Fusion Apps (on prem) — everything oracle can sell Kads get an override.

@RB96Zju-irl

I can confirm it’s Because we KADs are political animals and there is a major shake up (reorg) coming for us (KAD GTM strategy will reorganize) and they were asked to push oracle consulting with all pillar deals (oracle university too). KADs get paid an override on all net new business in their account ... any pillar or group across Tech & APPS.

KADs and sales in general don’t get commissions on oracle consulting sales, so why would they be pushing? Plus lots of people in sales just plain don’t think oracle consulting can be trusted to do a good job.

KAD - key account director

What is the KAD team?

So any bets on which group is next for the axe?

Can confirm KAD team pushing consulting deals in last few months to keep up perception of trying to get them business.

Can confirm HCM pipeline is crap plus the presales org has been hemorrhaging talent over the past six months.

@cai - if you’re not a newbie college kid and you make more than minimum wage, you’re OUT!

So does that mean that Mr Fusion, aka TK will also get dumped. I mean, what’s there for him to do now? Start another hugely expensive and totally failed multi year development effort?

Good.

FA is a cancer that is ruining our company. They can't build anything that works and they cripple the rest of the portfolio by leaching engineer time from other teams. The only thing SM and his team have ever been good at is getting other teams to do their work for them. Totally dysfunctional org from day one. It's about time they were put out of their misery.

Over 40 high salary = gone???

What does MH consider a "high salary"???

And I thought the new kids in the digital sales operation were going to generate billions in Fusion and HCM revenues just like that because they’re sooo much better than the stodgy, old sales force - what happened? Sarcasm! Yeah, I know, the 3 stooges are delusional idiots.

Without FApps, can Fusion Middleware be far behind? What a cobbled together mess that was.

Word is that HCM has no pipeline to speak of and it’s going to get decimated. Workday is kicking a--.

Sounds about right.

Fwiw, Mgmt is always in some kind of manufactured fire drill. It’s the only way upper Mgmt execs can motivate the lower ranks —- especially in sales. There is no morale. Everyone knows it’s a waiting game to be fired whether or not you perform. Great case study for a university professor to watch a company shrink into oblivion.

Smith Corona. Oracle.