Oracle update: rebates and redundancies (or a lack thereof)

This week Oracle news has been all about teething troubles following - you guess it - the Sun Mircrosystems takeover. There are bound to be difficulties at a time like this, only six months after the merger.

Firstly, there is the problem of hardware sales rebates for Sun hardware VARs. Sun used to pay out rebates within a 60-day lag time period, but a small group of Sun hardware resellers, due to the changeover to Oracle, are still waiting for payment of rebates from February. They are also still waiting to find out how hardware rebates will be paid out in the new financial year. Whilst Oracle is looking to placate Sun users, ensuring that support will be provided, Sun resellers seem to have been left a little in the dark on this one; here’s hoping things pick up soon.

The other big Oracle story this week is that about redundancies. Now, naturally, in any takeover of any company, there are going to be casualties, but reporting and speculation about the redundancies that the Oracle-Sun deal would bring have been bordering on hysterical. Various analysts and publications predicted a huge wave of redundancies, some claiming that there would be as many as 13,800 in one fell swoop.

In fact, as Oracle CEO Larry Ellison pointed out out this week, redundancies would actually be at around 1,000. The boss laid into members of the press who had speculated wildly over the lay-offs, saying that they should be “ashamed of themselves.” We’re inclined to agree here at Inatech. Yes, it may have been confusing that Oracle hired 2,000 salespeople in January, only to make 1,000 redundant six months later, but throwing random, huge figures into the air couldn’t have helped the situation much either.