Technology major Oracle Corp seeks to hire 300 sales staffers in India for its cloud computing business, which is growing ‘better than expected’, a senior company official said.

Cloud is a method of delivering information technology services in which resources are retrieved from the internet through web-based tools and applications, rather than a direct connection to a server.

Cloud focus

“The intention is to hire about 1,000 sales people in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) just to focus on the software-as-a- service, platform-as-a-service and infrastructure-as-a-service business. As India is leading growth in APAC, 30 per cent of our cloud sales hiring will be here,” said Shailender Kumar, Managing Director of Oracle India, told BusinessLine .

In the third quarter, Oracle’s global revenue from cloud SaaS and PaaS grew 30 per cent to $372 million. He said that Oracle wants to hire 300 cloud sales employees as soon as possible, but is constrained by the availability of trained talent. In a bid to attract the right resources, the company has launched a new website - jointhecloudcompany.oracle. com.

“We’ve got exciting new opportunities opening up within our key accounts teams, regional strategic teams, and emerging market businesses,” the website says.

According to management consulting firm Zinnov, the cloud computing market within India is expected to reach $1.08 billion this year.

Kumar, a veteran at Oracle, was elevated to the position of Managing Director late last year after the sudden exit of the erstwhile MD Sandeep Mathur. Following his departure, reports also surfaced about an anonymous whistle blower writing to the company's US office about a channel partner violating norms for a contract from the Andhra Pradesh government. Oracle has strongly denied those reports.

Partner network

So, did Oracle make any changes to its partner network following this episode?

“We have added many more processes internally and we have ensured that everything is known to our partners in terms of the processes we follow. Brand Oracle continues to be as strong as before in India,” said Kumar.

Oracle has a total employee base of 30,000 in India.