for all those still doubtful about the future of all HW org (and I mean all... including ES) here is a fact: all the HW field eng in EMEA/APAC with a grade IC3 or IC4 have been downgraded to IC2. the roll out will depend on specific countriy's rules, but it's decided. again, this is not a speculation, it's something decided and already made known to syndicates.
of course, needless to say those IC2 field eng will be requested to do the same work as before, unfortunately this is against Oracle's own policy, an IC2 can independently do a very restricted subset of things that an IC4 can do, and so all these new IC2 will be gracefully riffed very quickly given they are no more useful.
I would be very curious to know how Oracle wants to manage Exadata tickets in the future. do top management really believe everything can be done remotely through the romenian hub? that's crazy.