Oracle revenue up despite cloud challengers

Enterprise technology giant Oracle has reported a strong quarterly financial result, despite pressure from cloud providers competing in the company’s core business software market.

The company reported a 3% increase in GAAP total revenues for its third fiscal quarter, to US$9 billion. New software license revenues were up 7% to US$2.4 billion, and software license updates and product support revenues were up 8% to US$4.1 billion.

Oracle president and CFO, Safra Catz, says the company is on track to deliver its highest operating margin in its history this year.

"Oracle can achieve these record margins as an integrated hardware and software company because we are focusing on high margin systems where hardware and software are engineered to work together,” Catz says in a statement.

The growth in new software licenses is particularly positive for the company, which has spent billions acquiring online software companies RightNow Technologies and Taleo Corp in a bid to match the Software as a Service (SaaS) offerings of competitors like Salesforce.com and Workday.

As reported by Bloomberg, Macquarie Capital analyst Brad Zelnick downgraded Oracle’s stock in January because of these competitors ‘giving Oracle a run for their money’.

Go here to see Oracle’s full results and listen to a replay of the earnings conference call.

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