Oracle cuts staff count as it tries to keep pace with AWS

Oracle is prepping to cut more than 350 jobs so it can better focus on its cloud business, despite already having made cuts with its IaaS business.

The company reportedly wants to stay as close as possible to AWS's cloud model and this means it has to make cut-backs in other areas of its business - specifically the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) unit and its IaaS business aimed at compute, storage, and network resources.

Some 352 jobs will disappear as of 21 May, including 255 at its headquarters in Redwood City, California and 97 jobs from its Santa Clara campus, according to a notice filed last week, first spotted by Bloomberg.

"As our cloud business grows, we will continually balance our resources and restructure our development group to help ensure we have the right people delivering the best cloud products to our customers around the world," an Oracle spokesperson said, speaking to Bloomberg.

Apparently, the move will push forward Oracle CEO Larry Ellison's "vision for the future," Oracle executive vice president Don Johnson told staff in a company-wide email sent last week.

"It will streamline our products and services, focus investments on our most strategic priorities, and help us to more effectively and rapidly deliver the full promise and reach of Oracle's Gen 2 Cloud," wrote Johnson.

There's no denying that Oracle's cloud business seems to be faltering at present, with its fiscal Q3 2019 revenues down compared to the previous period.

Oracle will lose staff from its Redwood City, California, headquarters and its Santa Clara, California office from the end of May.

However, there's likely to be additional redundancies outside of the company's California offices, but it hasn't revealed where or how many others will lose their jobs, although IEEE Spectrum reported that there's expected to be at least 200 job losses across India, Mexico, and New Hampshire.