Link below. In short here is how the game is played: "Like IBM, Larry Ellison's company has begun leaning heavily on layoffs and stock buybacks to boost its EPS in the face of little-to-no revenue growth. It has also relied heavily on M&A over the years to boost sales growth."
https://realmoney.thestreet.com/investing/technology/oracle-worrisome-parallels-with-ibm-14975648
SAP had major layoffs too. They are not losing business to SAP, they are losing it to the cloud players: Salesforce, Workday, Netsuite, even darn Microsoft Dynamics 365 Cloud is k--ling it...
Glad SAP is taking customers away.
Actually this is what happens when you move to the cloud! You move from a OTC revenue recognition to a monthly revenue recognition. THIS completely changes how you go to market. IBM is stumbling it’s way thru this, and Oracle is now starting to stumble thru it. SAP has also done this. Remember their very large layoffs last month even thought they are highly profitable. The cloud model needs far less of everything verses the face to face OTC sales model. It’s far more efficient. The MAJOR problem with cloud is the transition to it. Revenues WILL drop and drop a lot, as its monthly revenue recognition vs the current model
Cloud revenue = sell once, bill monthly, modernize on the cloud providers schedule, host in very few data centers, staff in very few data centers. (Very efficient vs BAU)
OTC revenue = sell every 36 months, Bill the full amount every 36 months, modernize on the end users schedule, host in the end users data centers, end users do the staffing (labor intensive and not nearly as flexible)
Overall you are seeing the down side of cloud and it’s revenue recognition. Revenues will drop as you move to cloud
Unable to come with some real innovation.
Loosing many customers to SAP Hana.
Slowly going down the drain.
Cut heads and cut the License price to keep customers is the only solution.