Oracle cuts several hundred jobs, sources say

Oracle Corp (ORCL.O), the world's No. 3 software maker, has fired "several hundred" of its more than 86,000 workers, according to two sources close to the situation, as the business software maker struggles in an economic downturn.

Redwood City, California-based Oracle laid off the employees on Friday, trimming its force of sales consultants who advise clients on how to integrate its business management software and database programs into their operations, the sources said on Tuesday.

Oracle declined comment.

The scale of the job cuts is far smaller than some investors had expected. Rumors surfaced last week that the company was preparing to lay off thousands of its workers.

While Oracle joined a growing list of technology industry giants that are cutting workers, the scope of the reductions is smaller than ones planned by peers.

The Wall Street Journal reported earlier on Tuesday Oracle has cut around 500 positions.

(Reporting by Jim Finkle @ uk.reuters.com)

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Oracle to issue 41 security patches

Vulnerabilities, of which 15 are severe, are across 'hundreds' of its products. Oracle Corp. will issue 41 security patches next Tuesday addressing vulnerabilities across "hundreds" of its products, the company said in a pre-release announcement.

More than 15 of those patches address flaws that were described by the company as being remotely executable without the need for authentication -- a class of vulnerability to which Oracle usually assigns its highest severity rating. Of these, nine are slated for Oracle Secure Backup, two for its Application Server product and five for its BEA Product Suite.

The company's Critical Patch Update next week will also include fixes for 10 vulnerabilities in its database products. None of these exploits, however, can be taken advantage of remotely without the attacker having access to a username and password first, the company said.

Among the affected products that were listed by Oracle in its pre-announcement were multiple versions of its database going back to Oracle database 9i, its E-business suite products and several versions of Oracle's WebLogic Server and Portal products.

The number of patches being released by Oracle in this round is about the same as the last quarter, when the company issued 36 security fixes.

By Oracle's standards those number are relatively small. There have been occasions when the company has issued considerably more patches in its quarterly updates. Its January 2006 update had 82 patches, while the same year's October update had 101.

As with every release, Oracle is imploring administrators to install the patches as soon as possible. But if history is any indication, a large number of the database patches, at least, are unlikely to be installed in a hurry.

A study of 305 database administrators released in January 2008 by security vendor Sentrigo Inc. found that two-thirds of those surveyed did not install Oracle's security patches at all, no matter how critical the vulnerabilities were.

Most appeared to be reluctant to bring production environments down for any length of time to implement security patches and were also concerned about the possibility of the fixes breaking applications.

Author: Jaikumar Vijayan @ www.computerworld.com

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SAP wants Oracle to reveal software, support profit margins

SAP wants Oracle to reveal profit-margin information for JD Edwards and PeopleSoft software and support, according to a joint discovery statement filed this week in connection with Oracle's lawsuit against SAP.

In quarterly earnings reports, software vendors regularly trumpet statistics such as growth in earnings per share or the increase in revenue for general software categories, such as databases. But it is far from typical for companies to detail their profit margins for specific software product lines.

If such information were in the public domain, it could put Oracle at a disadvantage in negotiating with customers and provide "useful ammo" for its competitors, particularly Salesforce.com, said 451 Group analyst China Martens.

Oracle sued SAP in March 2007 for copyright infringement and other alleged violations, charging that workers at SAP's now-shuttered subsidiary TomorrowNow, a provider of third-party support for Oracle's PeopleSoft, JD Edwards and Siebel applications, had illegally downloaded material from Oracle's support systems and used them to court Oracle customers.

Meanwhile, SAP has said that TomorrowNow staff members were authorized to download materials from Oracle's site on behalf of TomorrowNow customers, but acknowledged that some "inappropriate downloads" had occurred. However, SAP has also said that Oracle's software remained in TomorrowNow's systems and has strongly rejected Oracle's claims of a broader pattern of wrongdoing.

Oracle has said its damages could top US$1 billion, but has not yet provided a specific figure.

SAP, meanwhile, states in the discovery document filed Monday that the information is "relevant to the calculation of Oracle's alleged damages."

"Under the Copyright Act, actual damages represent the injury to the market value of the copyrighted work at the time of infringement. In appropriate circumstances, this amount may be computed by determining the profits that would have accrued to plaintiff but for the infringement," it adds.

However, during discovery Oracle "has taken the position that it is unable to determine its profit margins on the two product lines that are at the center of this case," the filing adds. Oracle has refused to provide financial information to allow SAP to determine or make a "reasonable estimate of" its profits on the product lines, according to the filing. So, SAP wants the court to order Oracle to provide the "financial data necessary to attempt to determine Oracle's actual profit margins for the PeopleSoft and JDE products and support services."

SAP's motion comes some weeks before a settlement conference scheduled for Feb. 23. A judge has ordered both parties to turn in proposals for settlement that include specific dollar figures prior to the conference.

Oracle spokeswoman Deborah Hellinger declined comment on Wednesday.

"This filing speaks for itself and this is a normal part of the discovery process," SAP spokesman Andy Kendzie said of the company's request for the profit margin information.

SAP is not interested in dragging out the suit, he added. "We have always said that we would like this case to be resolved."

Author: Chris Kanaracus, IDG News Service

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