Oracle has laid off several channel and sales executives as well as its entire channel pre-sales technical support team. It is part of a cunning plan to push its cloud licensing direct sales.
So far the cuts have been in North America where 225 and 300 staff have been told that they will have to leave the building by the end of the month. Some of those let go were vice president-level sales managers who’d been focused on selling hardware and on-premise software at Oracle.
Gone are Gary Koopman, group vice president of alliances and channels in Oracle’s North America sales group and Christine Aumann who was director of sales consulting for Oracle’s North American hardware alliances. Steve Vakulskas, group vice president of North America technology sales has gone alone with Anthony Cioletti, who was a senior sales consulting manger and Dennis Schurmeier who looked after Oracle’s public sector business.
The figure includes sales engineers and sales consultants who worked closely with channel partners. Also gone is the entire channel pre-sales technical support team who go into the customer with the partners and determine how the solutions should be engineered and fit together.
Without them the channel is going to have a hell of a time getting deals closed.
This all comes down to Oracle CTO Larry Ellison’s war with Salesforce.com to become the first SaaS vendor to reach $10 billion in annual sales.
