Oracle Corp. is hiring 5,000 employees for its
cloud software business as it fights Salesforce.com Inc. for market share in
the fast-growing industry.
The hiring surge aims to beef up what’s already
Oracle’s fastest-growing business, increasing revenue by 58 percent in the
quarter it reported June 21 compared with a year earlier.
The move is the latest in a back-and-forth
between Oracle and its main rival that last week saw Salesforce Chief Executive
Officer Marc Benioff bragging he was on track to generate $10 billion in cloud
revenue this year, a goal Oracle was trying to hit first. It also comes as
other major U.S. tech companies are touting their domestic hiring plans in a
bid to avoid the ire of President Donald Trump.
Amazon.com Inc. has pledged to hire more than
100,000 workers by 2018 and has been holding job fairs across the U.S. Apple
Inc. has promised to invest $1 billion in advanced U.S. manufacturing, and its
key supplier Foxconn Technology Group is building a factory in Wisconsin.
The new Oracle jobs are in addition to 1,000
cloud employees the company said in July it was hiring in Europe, the Middle
East and Africa. Oracle is scheduled to report fiscal 2018 first quarter
earnings on Sept. 14.
