Five months after its acquisition by Oracle, the axe continues to fall on employees at Sun Microsystems.
This is what CEO Larry Ellison had to say in January:
The truth is we’re actually hiring 2,000 people over the next few months to beef up these businesses, and that’s about twice as many people as we’ll be laying off.
Late on Friday, though, Oracle said it would add massively to the $325m of restructuring costs it had projected from the Sun integration. There will be an additional $675-825m of charges, with around 80 per cent of that apparently earmarked for employee severance costs.
The latest job losses will fall in Europe and Asia, as part of a new restructuring plan adopted in early May. The affected employees started to hear about it a week ago.
Oracle isn’t saying how many jobs will go as a result of the latest round of cuts. But the move certainly leaves a big question over Mr Ellison’s assurances about the prospects for Sun employees. It also raises doubts about how much Sun has benefited from the recovery in the server market this year, ahead of Oracle’s next quarterly earnings announcement on June 24th.
