Briefs: January 17, 2005

ORACLE SLATED TO WIELD AX

Oracle, which alone claims 41,000 employees, and PeopleSoft, with about 11,000, could kill up to 6,000 jobs, although some analysts reckoned the cuts will be smaller.

The layoff estimate surfaced in court documents last summer as Oracle fought the U.S. Department of Justice and a reluctant PeopleSoft for the right to buy its application rival.

Some analysts expect total layoffs will be between 2,000 and 4,800 employees. Aside from the obvious duplicate efforts in public relations, human resources and accounting, Oracle fields its own enterprise application developers and sales teams that overlap with PeopleSoft's efforts.

After alarming PeopleSoft customers early on, Oracle executives have since said they will "oversupport" current and upcoming PeopleSoft releases.

While the biggest layoffs were still to come, there were already some departures by press time. Jim Finn, who headed Oracle's corporate communications and press efforts during the 18-month buyout battle, left last week.

Oracle officially declared its $10.3 billion buyout a done deal on Jan. 6 and is slated to roll out its plan for the merged company on Tuesday.

ENTERASYS PLANS TO CUT 115 JOBS
Network gear manufacturer Enterasys Networks said last Friday it would cut about 115 jobs and expects to record severance charges of $3.5 million to $3.8 million.

Enterasys said it should record the severance charges, which also include costs related to earlier cutbacks taken late last year, in the fourth quarter of 2004 and in the first quarter of 2005.

According to the company, by the second quarter of 2005 the overall workforce will total about 1,040 employees, down from 1,176 at the end of the third quarter of 2004.

Enterasys lost market share in the LAN switching market in 2004. According to Synergy Research Group, the company lost revenue share year over year in each of the first three quarters of 2004.

MICROSOFT CFO TO TAKE LEAVE FOR VENTURE CAPITAL FIRM
Microsoft CFO John Connors is departing for venture capital firm Ignition Partners, both companies said last week. Connors, who has been with Microsoft for 16 years, held such pivotal posts as CIO and CFO. Partners say Connors will be hard to replace.

"John's personality and style of communicating with partners was one of the highlights every year at the Enterprise Partner Summit," said Ken Winell, CEO of Econium, a Microsoft partner. "He will be sorely missed by the partner community because of his ability to relate the complex nature of Microsoft's corporate economics directly to our businesses," he added.

At Ignition Partners, Connors will join a bevy of other Microsoft veterans including Brad Silverberg, Richard Fade, John Ludwig and Rich Tong. Ignition Partners' portfolio companies include Certus, Jobster and Consera.

Connors will work with Microsoft on the transition, according to the company.

NORTEL NETWORKS' MCDONALD TAKES OVER AS CHANNEL CHIEF
Nortel Networks began 2005 with a new channel chief. Perry McDonald will replace Christine Durham, formerly vice president of market and channel outreach.

Durham left the company at the end of December to pursue other opportunities and spend more time with her family, said McDonald, director of global channel marketing at Nortel. McDonald has taken on Durham's role and is now responsible for worldwide channel strategy. Previously, as director of market readiness, McDonald was responsible for Nortel's channel strategy in the Americas.

Durham's departure preceded a realignment of Nortel's marketing team into a global organization rather than smaller, regionally focused teams. The change is part of an overall strategy to gain more mind- and market share, McDonald said.

"Our message will be a lot stronger," he said, noting that this year Nortel plans to focus marketing efforts in four areas: mobile, security, convergence and SMB.

SYNNEX, HEWLETT-PACKARD INK DISTRIBUTION DEAL
Synnex is now authorized to sell Hewlett-Packard enterprise storage products and expects to soon unveil a similar agreement with Quantum, said John Paget, president of North American channels and COO of the distributor.

Synnex currently sells lower-end HP storage products and can now carry the higher-end HP StorageWorks Enterprise Virtual Array product line and the HP StorageWorks Enterprise Systems Library E-Series tape libraries. The products are sold through a closed distribution model that requires HP certification, according to Synnex.

Synnex plans to build the business from scratch with solution providers not currently selling HP enterprise storage, Paget said.