Oracle predicts bright future for Sun

 

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By Stuart Turton

Posted on 28 Jan 2010 at 09:02

Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison has blasted reports that he will shed 13,000 jobs at Sun, claiming he intends to bolster the company's ranks to make money.

Investment bank UBS predicted earlier this week that Oracle would make sweeping job cuts at Sun in an effort to reap immediate profits from its acquisition.

However, Ellison poured scorn on the "irresponsible" claims, saying he planned to hire an additional 2,000 engineers, sales staff and other employees at it begins a greater push of Sun's Sparc Unix, Java, and MySQL.

We are not cutting Sun for profitability, we are hiring Sun to profitability

"We are not cutting Sun for profitability, we are hiring Sun to profitability," Ellison told analysts at a company Q&A. "The Sparc Solaris business is going to grow. The MySQL and Java business is going to grow. That's how we are approaching this merger."

And while the news may have had shareholders sweating, Ellison reassured them by promising to turn $1.5 billion in profit on the back of Sun sales by June.

As part of this, he reiterated plans to begin integrating Oracle and Sun's hardware and software into new products. However, the news wasn't all rosy with the Oracle boss confirming the company would sell direct to Sun customers - skipping by resellers and channel partners completely.

Faced with one irate reseller, who accused Ellison of stealing his livelihood, the Oracle chief executive claimed there was still room for partners who offered additional value in the sales chain, but that those "who simply take the Sun box and resell it will go away."