Oracle expected to slash 1,000-plus jobs in Europe

Oracle sign on a red background

Oracle is preparing to cut more than a thousand jobs across locations in Europe as part of a wider restructuring following several turbulent months.

The software giant may slash up to 1,300 staff in Ireland, as well as possibly Amsterdam and Malaga, with employees invited to reapply for their roles, according to the Irish Times.

This comes following its inconsistent financial results, with second-quarter revenues for the 2020 fiscal year, which closed 30 November 2019, falling short of analyst expectations.

Staff based in Ireland were invited to an all-hands meeting with managers on Wednesday afternoon, according to the report, in which they were told about the plans.

An unnamed spokesperson told the Irish Times that the company would continue to rebalance resources and restructure teams as Oracle’s cloud business grows. IT Pro approached Oracle for confirmation but the company declined to comment.

The company has undergone several staffing fluctuations over the last year or so, with the latest round of layoffs coming almost exactly a year after the company cut approximately 350 roles in order to remain close to AWS’ cloud model.

The wider ambitions meant cutting back staffing in areas such as the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) unit, as well as its infrastructure as a service (IaaS) business aimed at compute, storage and network resources.

The latest round of up-to-1,300 job cuts could affect employees working across its sales, business development and solutions engineering units.

The firm’s second-quarter 2020 financial results saw revenue from its cloud and on-premise licensing business drop by 7% to $1.1 billion, while cloud services and license support revenue rose 3% to $6.8 billion.

The news comes in contrast with the company’s ambitions set out in October last year, with Oracle’s executive vice president for its OCI unit Don Johnson outlining plans to hire 2,000 additional workers.

The hires were expected to feed into the expansion of its cloud computing services as the company attempts to compete more strongly against the likes of Azure and AWS. These jobs would be added in the US and India at the firm’s software development hubs.

Keumars Afifi-Sabet
Features Editor

Keumars Afifi-Sabet is a writer and editor that specialises in public sector, cyber security, and cloud computing. He first joined ITPro as a staff writer in April 2018 and eventually became its Features Editor. Although a regular contributor to other tech sites in the past, these days you will find Keumars on LiveScience, where he runs its Technology section.