Is Oracle conducting another round of mass layoffs?

Oracle has reportedly laid off hundreds of employees in a major shake-up on Friday (September 1), according to the company's staff.

The IT giant's employees reported the latest development online, with several anonymous threads on the website TheLayoff.com suggesting that the company had removed as many as 2,500 employees working on Solaris, SPARC silicon development and storage hardware.

Some comments also suggested that a few employees had been retained, while others revealed that workers were being transferred from dedicated Solaris teams to aid Oracle's Linux development efforts, hinting at the end of the product's development.

Oracle, however, has not commented on the rumours.

RIF, or Reduction In Force, in the tweet is the term that Oracle generally uses whenever they officially comment on job cuts, even though they have not done so in this case yet. It is on the lines of IBM's RA, which stands for Resource Action.

Well-known computer scientist Simon Phipps, known for his path-breaking work at IBM and Sun Microsystems, also tweeted that most of Solaris' tech staff had been laid off.

IBTimes UK has reached out to Oracle for comments about the unconfirmed reports and is awaiting the company's response.