Oracle Corp cut jobs in marketing and the US customer experience division, signalling a pullback in customer analytics and advertising services.

Some workers were told Aug 1 that their positions had been eliminated, according to four people with direct knowledge of the matter. Junior sales employees as well as a division sales director were among those let go, according to one former worker who lost their job and asked not to be named to avoid professional repercussions. Rumours of pending cuts had swirled through the division in recent weeks, but management said the positions were safe, one former employee said.

The customer experience division provides analytics and advertising services. It has long lagged behind the growth of the rest of the Austin, Texas-based software company. During an event last year, executive vice-president Douglas Kehring said the unit had “historically been probably a little more disappointing than it should have been”.

The company “decided to reorganise” the customer experience group “and move on”, a former senior manager of sales engineering, whose position was cut, wrote on LinkedIn. In a separate post, another fired manager cited the restructuring for the job reductions. Some marketing positions were also cut, according to LinkedIn posts by a former senior manager and group vice president.

The job reductions come as Oracle looks to health care to spur the company’s effort in the competitive market for cloud technology. Earlier this year, Oracle completed a US$28.3bil purchase of digital medical records provider Cerner Corp, seeking customers in an industry that has been comparatively slow to adopt cloud database technology.

Oracle didn’t respond to requests for comment. The extent of the job cuts that began Monday couldn’t immediately be determined.

The shares declined less than 1% to close at US$77.44 Monday in New York, and are down 11% this year.

 - Bloomberg