Oracle to slash Sun workforce

published 7 June 2010

Oracle will be cutting a large number of Sun Microsystems' employees, it was revealed today.

A regulatory filing from the vendor showed it expected to incur costs of between $550 million (379 million) and $650 million for "restructuring charges related principally to employee severance costs."

The filing did not reveal exactly how many members of staff were set for the chop but it did account for the vast majority of the company's expected costs between $675 million and $825 million for its further integration of Sun across European and Asian regions.

Oracle bought Sun for $7.4 billion back in April last year but it had to jump through a lot of hoops to get the deal approved, both by the EU and the US authorities.

Since the takeover was finalised in January a number of high profile Sun employees, including chief executive (CEO) Jonathan Schwartz and Java creator James Gosling, jumped ship but Oracle CEO, Larry Ellison, had been bragging about a further 2,000 employees being hired rather than fired.

IT PRO contacted Oracle for comment on the layoffs but it had not responded to our request at the time of publication.

Jennifer Scott is a former freelance journalist and currently political reporter for Sky News. She has a varied writing history, having started her career at Dennis Publishing, working in various roles across its business technology titles, including ITPro. Jennifer has specialised in a number of areas over the years and has produced a wealth of content for ITPro, focusing largely on data storage, networking, cloud computing, and telecommunications.

Most recently Jennifer has turned her skills to the political sphere and broadcast journalism, where she has worked for the BBC as a political reporter, before moving to Sky News.

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