Trump’s FCC pick may trim net neutrality rules — what’s a CIO to do?

Net neutrality rules ranked high in tech news this week. Here’s what else was happening:

Oracle announces layoffs. In a move to focus on its cloud offerings, Oracle is laying off about 450 employees in its Santa Clara, Calif., SPARC hardware systems division. The Santa Clara facility is not closing; rather, Oracle is refocusing its hardware systems business and has therefore decided to lay off certain employees, Oracle wrote in a letter to the California Employment Development Department, the Mercury News reported. The employees being fired include hardware and software developers, according to the same Mercury News report. Oracle has also stalled the development of the Unix operating system Solaris. Solaris and SPARC were part of Oracle’s $7.4 billion Sun Microsystems acquisition in 2010. Reports from The Layoff also claim that Oracle is firing about 1,800 employees companywide.

Facebook hiring former Google exec to lead VR.  Xiaomi executive Hugo Barra will be joining Facebook to steer its virtual reality initiatives, including heading the Oculus VR team, Facebook announced Wednesday. The news comes within a week of an intellectual property lawsuit against Facebook-acquired Oculus going to trial. Barra, who is credited with leading Xiaomi’s global expansion efforts, will return to Silicon Valley after he transitions out of his current role at the Chinese tech company in February. “Hugo shares my belief that virtual and augmented reality will be the next major computing platform … Hugo is going to help build that future, and I’m looking forward to having him on our team,” Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post. Before joining Xiaomi, Barra served as Google’s vice president of Android product management.

IBM acquiring cybersecurity startup. IBM Security is acquiring cybersecurity software firm Agile 3 Solutions, IBM announced Monday. The San Francisco-based startup develops software to help C-suite and senior executives better manage and understand the risks associated with protecting corporate data. “Adding Agile 3 Solutions to the IBM Security immune system of capabilities gives our team the ability to not only protect critical data, but demonstrate why it is at risk and how to remediate that risk,” said Marc van Zadelhoff, general manager at IBM Security. In other cybersecurity investment news, Microsoft announced it will continue to invest over $1 billion a year on cybersecurity research and development, outside of acquisitions the company may make in the sector. “As more and more people use cloud, that spending has to go up,” Bharat Shah, Microsoft vice president of security, told Reuters.

Assistant editor Mekhala Roy contributed to this week’s news roundup.