US tech giant Oracle is laying off dozens of Ravello employees in Israel, sources have told "Globes." Ravello's development center in Israel has 70-80 employees, more than half of whom have been summoned to pre-layoff hearings next week. Oracle acquired Ravello in 2016 for $500 million and added it to its public cloud division.
Ravello, which develops effective cloud computing solutions, was founded in 2011 by serial entrepreneurs Benny Schneider and Rami Tamir. In its five years as an independent company, Ravello raised $54 million from Sequoia Capital, NVP, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Israeli fund Vintage Partners. Ravello had 60 employees when it was acquired by Oracle.
Last month, Oracle closed its accelerator in Israel after two years of activity. The accelerator, which was managed by Noam Inbar, operated in Sarona in Tel Aviv. The accelerator handled two groups of five enterprises each for six-month periods.
The startups in the program received mentoring, infrastructure, and access to the company's cloud products and potential customers. The Israeli program was part of a global program at 10 sites worldwide. Market sources said that the program had been shut down at all of the sites.
Last March, Oracle began a worldwide wave of layoffs. The company fired thousands of employees, but up until now, the layoffs had not affected Israel. Reports say that the layoffs will amount to up to 10% of the company's staff around the world.
Oracle's market cap is $181 billion, following a 15% rise in its share price over the past year. One cause of the increase was the company's buyback plan. Oracle was affected by reduced use of its infrastructure by Amazon, one of its most important customers, which switched to its own database infrastructure.
Oracle has 400 employees in Oracle Israel, managed by country leader Uzi Navon. Its employees in Israel include 250 programmers in four activity centers: Tel Aviv, Petah Tikva, Ra'anana, and Beer Sheva. The rest of its employees work in marketing, support, applications, and training for the company's customers in Israel. Ravello's activity is located in Ra'anana.
Oracle's activity in Israel is based on acquisitions. Besides its acquisition of Ravello, Oracle acquired other startups: Convergin in 2010 for $80-90 million, HyperRoll in 2009 for tens of millions of dollars, Primavera in 2008, and Demantra in 2006.
No response was forthcoming from Oracle.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on June 18, 2019
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