Acquisitions, Investments in China, and fears of imminent recession lead Oracle to lay off thousands of employees.
Last week, Oracle Corporation began the first round of job eliminations which affected the computer tech giant’s US-based employees. This mass employment purge is part of Oracle Corporation’s restructuring plan to reduce $1 billion in expenses–namely, by reducing their global workforce of 143,000 down to 140,000. The first batch of firings will affect employees at the San Francisco Bay Area office in Oracle’s advertising and customer experience groups but even more layoffs are planned for Canada, India, and Europe in the coming weeks and months.
News of the mass layoff first began circulating on Reddit in July as a leaked internal EMail from Oracle Cerner described upcoming changes within the company. The timing of these events is rather convenient, according to some managers and reactions online; Oracle completed their $28.4 billion acquisition of Cerner in June and at the same time, picked up a major cloud services customer in TikTok. Oracle’s heavy investments in the health IT service Cerner and Chinese-owned TikTok, as well as their attempts to compete against Amazon Web Services, seem to contradict the company’s previous statements about a fear of imminent recession. It is also speculated that the sudden restructuring following such major financial investments could be politically-motivated.
Following Oracle’s takeover of Cerner, former Cerner CEO Dave Feinberg was retained to become the chairman of the newly-formed Oracle Health. This was first announced on Cerner’s subreddit on July 13th. Oracle’s Don Johnson, who runs all Oracle engineering for applications and platform services, will be Cerner’s engineering and product executives while a number of corporate functions will be transferred to Oracle teams including IT, finance, legal, and human resources. At the time of the announcement, Cerner eliminated 150 positions. Feinberg and Oracle’s Chief Technology Officer Jerome Labat received guaranteed contracts for one year from the closing date. Should Oracle terminate them, they will receive $4.5 million and $2.3 million in cash respectively, plus accelerated share vesting. The deal was highlighted in a 171-page filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Additionally, the filing also includes four top executives (including former Cerner CEO Brent Shafer) with lucrative golden parachute protection deals in the neighborhood of $10 million to $22 million should they also be let go during Oracle’s acquisition.
Will Oracle’s Restructuring Affect Commerce Cloud Users?
Despite Oracle’s publicly-announced concerns over inflation and recession; their restructuring plans; and the mass layoff of thousands of employees, there have been no formal statements by the company itself indicating any severe internal hardships, nor are speculators and industry insiders predicting Oracle to go out of business anytime soon. Quite the opposite, in fact. It is because of Oracle’s commitment to cloud-based technology that will ensure the company’s future.
Unlike Volusion, which was hit with a data breach scandal so monumental that it forced them into bankruptcy in 2020, Oracle remains a top player in the computer technology industry and as a pioneer in cloud database services. Among Oracle’s vast portfolio of products and services is their Commerce Cloud eCommerce platform. Oracle Commerce Cloud allows B2C and B2B businesses to provide their customers with personalized experiences across channels, connecting customer and sales data from their CRM and financial and operational data.
Oracle Cloud Commerce is one of hundreds of products and services offered by Oracle including Oracle Database, Oracle Cloud, NetSuite, mySQL, Berkeley DB, among others. It is a highly-regarded and popular eCommerce service among users. On the other hand, with Oracle having their fingers in so many pots, the company does not have the same level of eCommerce-centric dedication to their Cloud Commerce platform in the way that a dedicated eCommerce provider such as BigCommerce or Shopify would have with their own respective platforms. In other words, Oracle spreads themselves thin with other efforts whereas eCommerce platform providers like BigCommerce and Shopify are in business for the purpose of eCommerce. BigCommerce and Shopify also offer cloud-based services through Google Cloud, so not only would online stores have the benefit of powering their websites with a dedicated eCommerce-based system, they can also take advantage of cloud-based database management provided by the largest Internet company in the world (Alphabet Company, parent company of Google).
DIZTINCT’S WEBSITE MIGRATION SERVICES
Users currently on Commerce Cloud may want to consider migrating their websites off of Oracle’s busy platform in favor of an eCommerce-centric system from BigCommerce or Shopify. At Diztinct, we are eCommerce experts with over 15 years of experience in custom website design, development, and engineering as well as website migration services. We have the technical know-how and expertise to protect your website’s critical internal information, SEO standings, and keyword rankings. Plus, we’re proud to have the distinct honor of being official design partners with BigCommerce AND Shopify. When you hire Diztinct to handle your website migration project, you have the support of an officially certified expert, regardless of which of the two platforms you choose. We address every aspect of the website migration process:
- Basic data transfer
- Product and inventory management
- Page titles and metadata migration
- SEO data retention and optimization
- Link preservation
- Category page migration
- Policy and other informational page transfer
- Redirects
We have the tools, the talent, and the support of Shopify and BigCommerce to ensure that all of your website’s important data remains protected and your current SEO rankings are maintained, if not improved, during the process.
Are you ready to give your website and your business the Diztinct advantage over the competition? If so, let’s talk. Get in touch with us today and get ready to make your website work for you.