Oracle Laying Off Staff At Underperforming Commerce Cloud: Report

The e-commerce solution stemming from the acquisition of ATG in 2010 is failing to find traction in a crowded market for online retail platforms. Staff in Cambridge, Mass., and Ireland have already been let go, with employees bracing for more cuts.

After failing to win significant market share, Oracle is laying off staff on its Commerce Cloud team, according to a report published Thursday in The Register.

Oracle’s platform for building online retail, stemming from its 2010 acquisition of Cambridge, Mass.-based ATG, has struggled in an increasingly crowded market for e-commerce platforms, with customers numbering in the double digits, according to The Register.

While Oracle would not comment on job actions, the report is backed by anonymous employee posts on TheLayoff.com.

[Related: Report: More Than 1,000 Oracle Layoffs Likely To Hit Europe]

One person wrote: “Dozens of employees cut in OCCS yesterday/today. Cambridge office taking a big hit.”

Another blamed Commerce Cloud falling behind, after ATG was a dominant player, to “poor vision, strategy and continued failure by the product development/management leadership team to execute.”

The Register reported, based on anonymous sources close to the product’s development teams, that several employees based in Ireland and Massachusetts have already been let go, and others are nervous about their jobs as they question Oracle’s commitment to the platform.

In June of 2015, Oracle launched Commerce Cloud, a Software-as-a-Service tool set that solution providers could use to quickly design and deploy customized e-commerce sites for their clients.

The product joined Oracle’s CX Suite of Customer Experience Solutions that also included marketing, sales and service clouds with the aim of making it easier to stand up online retail that integrates powerful back-end capabilities.

The ATG technology, combined with other Oracle software, empowered vendors to offer a complete lineup of cross-channel CRM, retail and e-commerce applications for unified marketing, merchandising, service and order management, and supply chain management, Oracle told CRN back then.

But Oracle never re-engineered the product for the cloud, and it fell into an awkward spot where legacy ATG customers didn’t see the value of upgrading, while potential new customers were turned off by the inability to seamlessly integrate with cloud services from outside providers, according to The Register.