Emerald tiger, firing dragon

Here it comes. Just about a year and a half after expanding operations in Galway, Ireland and creating an office in Belfast, Oracle representatives announced today that the software giant will “reduce the headcount” of its Irish operations by the end of 2006. Oracle currently employs more than 900 people in Ireland and 57,000 employees worldwide.

Blame it on the Siebel acquisition: the $5.8 billion purchase came with the statement that more than 2,000 jobs would be lost internationally following the completion of the completion of the transaction. As appears to be standard policy, today’s Oracle statement did not provide hard details on the number of jobs to be lost, but offered an estimate that staffing levels in Ireland would be reduced by around two per cent, which in turn translates to between forty-five and fifty jobs.

Fifty appears to be the magic number, as this was the number of jobs created in Ireland to augment staff in 2004 on the occasion of opening the Belfast office. Then, all was optimistic for Oracle’s future in Ireland. The fifty new positions were to be created for Oracle’s “Consulting Centre of Excellence” in Dublin’s East Point Business Park. With the new Dublin operation came the promise of another 100 positions open in existing Oracle departments, though no new positions were created in the end.

An unspecified number of jobs are also to be created in Belfast, where Oracle will open a sales and support office to cater for the needs of customers in the region. Sheridan said that Oracle wants to gain access to the highly skilled workforce in Northern Ireland and felt that its growing customer base in the area would benefit from local support. The trimming will be performed with redeployment, natural attrition, non-renewal of short-term contracts and good old fashioned layoffs.

The finance area of the Dublin and Galway offices are expected to take the hardest hit, and Oracle representatives did state emphatically that the Galway outlet is still key to their plans on the Emerald Isle. The deal marks the latest in a string of acquisitions by Oracle. Numerically, it’s the twenty-first acquisition since 2005, when Oracle began their splurging with the $10.6 billion deal.