Oracle Hiring 5,000 for Cloud Business in Race With Salesforce

Oracle Hiring 5,000 for Cloud Business in Race With Salesforce

Oracle is hiring another 5,000 employees for its cloud software business as it fights Salesforce for market share in the fast-growing industry, according to Bloomberg.

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 CEO 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 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 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.