Global computing giant Oracle has announced that it is launching a recruitment drive to add 1,700 more jobs to its payroll across Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) as it gears up for an assault on the Cloud market.

The business intelligence software and computing hardware supplier is rolling out it's Fusion Cloud offering this year, which includes a range of its existing business applications delivered through a public Cloud which customers can use to build upon. The system was made available in July.

At the company's financial year-end briefing at the end of June, its CEO Larry Ellison said: “We are offering a much higher degree of security, a much higher degree of isolation, when you run on our public cloud, which looks a lot more like Amazon, let’s say, than Salesforce.com... Salesforce.com will be facing very, very serious competition.”

In a statement released today announcing the recruitment drive, Oracle said it has seen growth across all lines in the EMEA region and that it now needs to swell it's numbers across a number of different disciplines in order to capitalise. It says it will be looking for graduates to senior sales staff and pre-sales consultants, as well as new members for its Oracle Direct customer service faction.

In an official statement, Alan Hartwell, vice president of technology solutions for Oracle in the UK, said: “This is an exciting time for Oracle. Hiring 1,700 new colleagues will help to support growth across all lines of our EMEA business and reflects the demand which exists for our end-to-end provision of hardware and software which is designed and engineered to work together.

“That approach is proving hugely popular with customers and the resulting growth presents us with an opportunity to create more jobs across the region. We are very proud to work with some of the largest and most innovative companies in the world and need people who are excited by the challenges that brings.”
The statement noted that the company will use the leading social media platforms to find new talent, as well as the traditional routes.

Anne-Marie O'Donnell, vice president for recruitment in the EMEA regions, added: “Our results speak for themselves and we are keen to maintain that level of performance. In order to do so we need to attract the very best talent. The growth story at Oracle is something everybody in the business prides themselves on. We can’t speak for other companies in the IT industry but we are making these hires in order to facilitate our next phase of growth.”

Oracle, with it's global headqaurters in San Francisco, USA, employs somewhere in the region of 110,000 worldwide.