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Oracle sharpens axe for BEA layoffs
Friday, May 09 2008
by Silicon.com


Oracle is on Friday expected to start laying off at least 500
staff, eliminating duplication across product engineering and
management, following its USD8.5bn acquisition of BEA
Systems.

Separate sources close to Oracle, who declined to be
identified, said the company will send out notifications of
layoffs on Friday, and make a formal, public announcement
next week.



Some business units will get hit hard, losing up to half
their numbers, while others will escape untouched. Business
unit managers have been given a headcount by the Oracle chief
financial officer's department and are making layoffs if they
have more staff as a result of the merger.



It is not clear which units will feel the brunt of the cuts,
or if Oracle engineering and business staff are also going.



It is understood that BEA's WebLogic Server unit is "safe".
Oracle is believed to be updating WebLogic to support
Oracle's business applications, and that, in doing so, has
pushed back a summer update of WebLogic Server to later in
the year.



This raises questions over the future of Oracle's application
server and the status of the product's engineering team.
Oracle has spent billions of dollars building and re-writing
its application server. But in the end it turned to BEA,
which was faster and had better ease-of-use features, to
better close the gap with number-one IBM.



The companies also overlap in: portal -- Oracle now owns four
as a result of the acquisition; service oriented
architecture; and development tools.



Oracle declined to comment.



Now we know why Oracle's server technologies development VP
Thomas Kurian was so eager to skip over what Oracle had
planned for BEA's WebLogic, AquaLogic and its own products
during a JavaOne keynote presentation that was gloriously
isolated from reality.





The Register
and its contents are copyright 2008 Situation Publishing.
Reprinted with permission.