To little surprise, Oracle Corp. announced that it will fire 5,000 employees, or 9 percent of its total workforce, as it begins its integration with PeopleSoft.
Oracle plans to offer more details about the layoffs today.
Employees will be affected at both PeopleSoft and Oracle, which formally completed the $10.3 billion acquisition of its rival on January 7. Layoff notices began going out on Friday. The New York Times, citing several people close to Oracle, reported that employees were to learn from overnight packages delivered to their homes beginning this past Saturday whether they are among the newly unemployed. The company stated that it would take up to 10 days to notify all of those who will be affected.
Oracle also announced that it plans to retain over 90 percent of PeopleSoft’s product development and product support staff. The development team will complete the deployment of PeopleSoft version 8.9 and then begin development of the next upgrade, version 9.0, the company added.
“By retaining the vast majority of PeopleSoft technical staff, Oracle will have the resources to deliver on the development and support commitments we have made to PeopleSoft customers over the last 18 months,” said Oracle chief executive officer Larry Ellison, in a statement.
Early on during its 18-month pursuit of PeopleSoft, Oracle stated that it would lay off 6,000 people if the merger were consummated. Piper Jaffray & Co. analyst Tad Piper told the Associated Press that he believes Oracle still plans to hit that target, but he expects the company to make the remaining job cuts very gradually.