Oracle Plans to Hire More Employees Than it Cuts From Sun

With Oracle's anticipated purchase of Sun drawing near, company CEO Larry Ellison disclosed plans to hire 2,000 engineering and sales employees - more workers than it's expected to cut from Sun's workforce, according a The Wall Street Journal report posted Tuesday.

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Oracle's acquisition of Sun appears all but certain, having overcome a major potential barrier last week when it was approved by The European Union. Further, Sun delisted itself from the Nasdaq Tuesday.

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Ellison told The Wall Street Journal that Oracle plans to take on 2,000 new employees - but that it will reduce Sun's head count by a larger number. As of Sept. 30, Sun had just over 27,000 people on staff; Oracle reported a head count of over 83,000 at the end of November, according to The WSJ.

"We are not cutting Sun to profitability," Ellison told the publication. "We think that this business will be profitable immediately."

Oracle intends to publicly outline its post-Sun acquisition-strategy on Wednesday, but company officials have made it clear that Oracle will transition from a software-only business to one that deals in both software and hardware. Bob Shimp, group vice president for Oracle's technology business unit, said that Oracle will continue to invest in Sun's multithreaded UltraSparc T family of processors, which are used in its Niagara servers, and the M series server family, based on the Sparc64 processors developed by Fujitsu.

Oracle executives are due to give an update on their strategy for the combined company, including how it will reconcile overlapping products, during a five-hour event Wednesday at its Redwood Shores, Calif., headquarters.

This story, "Oracle Plans to Hire More Employees Than it Cuts From Sun" was originally published by InfoWorld.