"Leaked memo shows Oracle's flagship cloud unit told employees to ramp up for '24x7' work on projects that insiders say have fallen behind schedule
• Oracle's cloud is pausing all work that doesn't align with a new set of "updated priorities."
• Insiders say several key region-build projects are behind schedule to hit deadlines later this year.
• A memo says to expect "24x7" work to hit targets, but insiders say it became "14x7" after backlash.
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, the database giant's flagship cloud unit and its answer to the dominant Amazon Web Services, has instructed its employees to focus on an updated set of priorities for the next several quarters, according to a memo viewed by Insider.
"Other feature and development work is paused to assist in this effort," the memo, sent to the cloud unit's over 10,000 employees last week, said.
"We know this change impacts many of the teams directly and indirectly. We appreciate your ability to Expect and Embrace Change, and your ability to continue to iterate and deliver a world class platform," the memo said, referring to the unit's leadership principles. Oracle declined to comment for this story.
The email lists those priorities in order of importance, starting with "security (e.g. patching)," followed by "operations & support," "region build for big customers (Telesis, NRI) and gov work," and "region build for all other regions."
Two Oracle insiders said several of the region-build projects, with deadlines before the end of the year, were running behind schedule. In industry parlance, a "region" generally refers to the cloud servers or data centers intended to serve a particular area or country, and a "region build" is the process of setting those up. New regions would help expand Oracle's reach and make it more appealing for large customers and government deals.
The memo said its highest-priority region after those built for customers and the government was in Israel, followed by "other dedicated regions," including Oman, then the "rest of commercial." Oracle's dedicated cloud regions serve only particular areas or countries.
"Region bootstrap, across regions, will need to happen on a 24x7 basis in order to hit our delivery dates. All teams will need to resource appropriately to accommodate this expectation," the memo said.
"This means, in some cases, temporarily reallocating personnel from other projects, teams, or orgs," it added, further calling on teams to "facilitate war rooms on a 24x7 basis to troubleshoot issues" and create 24-hour-a-day on-call rotations.
Three Oracle employees told Insider that company leadership had since reduced the schedules to "14x7" after widespread discontent that one person characterized as "backlash."
Two people close to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure speculated the updated priorities could be, at least in part, related to Oracle's desire to make itself a stronger competitor for the Pentagon's Jo--t Warfighter Cloud Capability contract, the successor to the now scrapped $10 billion Jo--t Enterprise Defense Infrastructure deal. Oracle lost out on the JEDI contract, which was awarded to Microsoft but ultimately canceled amid a lengthy legal challenge from Amazon.
The email suggests security is the cloud unit's new top priority. The company recently reorganized its cloud-security organization, which has a few hundred employees, and replaced its leader after only about a year, according to company insiders and an internal email viewed by Insider.
The changes come as Oracle Cloud Infrastructure's workplace culture comes under scrutiny. More than a dozen current and former Oracle employees and executives recently told Insider that the cloud unit is led by what one person described as a "culture of fear." They told Insider the division's boss, Clay Magouyrk, was known for trying to get results by "beating down" employees emotionally.
Magouyrk's leadership style was cited in a pair of lawsuits filed by former vice presidents against the company and an executive. One of the former vice presidents who sued Oracle died by su----e in April. An attorney for the vice presidents said the cases were headed for arbitration."