Oracle Shedding Hardware, Solaris Workers

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Oracle reportedly is slashing hundreds of jobs globally, including more than 950 jobs in its Santa Clara, California, facility.

In an Aug. 31 notice filed with the California Employment Development Department, Oracle said all affected employees have been notified and the terminations are expected to occur on Oct. 31. The Santa Clara facility isn’t closing as part of the layoffs, it said.

According to a report by Fortune, the affected employees have been working on Oracle’s hardware and Solaris operating system efforts.

Numerous positions are being eliminated, such as hardware developers, hardware development technicians, software developers and system administrators. None of the affected employees is represented by a union.

Oracle declined comment.

Stratecast/Frost & Sullivan’s Michael Jude

Posts on thelayoff.com said up to 2,500 Oracle employees around the world are affected by the cuts. In addition to Santa Clara, Oracle reportedly cut positions in San Diego; Austin, Texas; Massachusetts; Colorado; and India.

Michael Jude, Stratecast/Frost & Sullivan’s consumer communications services research manager, noted that Oracle inherited both its server business and Solaris operating system from Sun Microsystems, which it acquired in 2010.

“Together the hardware and software are essentially just a very expensive Unix platform,” he said. “Most server farms are built on much more open and inexpensive X86 platforms so the Sun solution is not as attractive as it once was. Although the performance is arguably better than off-the-shelf solutions, the Sun-derived systems are much more expensive.”

Ultimately, Oracle will simply phase out both their server hardware and Solaris software in favor of a more open source approach to their IT platforms, Jude said.