Oracle hangs hat on cloud with hardware sales still withering

First-quarter results show vendor selling a quarter fewer servers than a year ago, but top brass bullish about cloud play

Oracle's hardware revenue continued to moult in its first fiscal quarter, as total sales dropped two per cent annually.

For the three months to 31 August, the vendor's global turnover dropped two per cent in dollar terms on the corresponding period last year to $8.2bn (£5bn). Despite the sales decline, operating income grew seven per cent to $2.9bn, with margins spiking from 32 to 35 per cent.

The comparative strength of the dollar ate into growth in Q1, with total sales rising three per cent in local currencies. Constant-currency growth in operating profit was pegged at 15 per cent.

Oracle's software sales for the quarter were up four per cent as measured in dollars to $5.7bn, representing 70 per cent of the total top line. New licence sales rose five per cent to $1.6bn, with update and support revenue growing three per cent annually to $4.1bn.

Hardware sales fell 19 per cent to $1.35bn, representing 16 per cent of the overall total, compared with 16 per cent a year ago. Support revenue declined 11 per cent to $574m, with product sales plummeting 24 per cent to $779m.

But Oracle president Mark Hurd asserted that the vendor's cloud offering and its combined hardware and software platforms will be the keystone of future progress.

"Exadata, Exalogic, Exalytics and our other engineered systems grew more than 100 per cent in the quarter," he said. "For the full year, we expect to double engineered systems sales to well over $1bn. Oracle's new cloud business is also approaching a $1bn annual run rate. These two businesses will drive Oracle's growth for years to come."

Chief executive Larry Ellison (pictured) claimed that in "a little more than a week from now we will announce lots of enhancements to the Oracle Cloud".

"There are more CRM, ERP and HCM applications as a service, and more Oracle database, Java and social network platform services. Our new infrastructure-as-a-service is available in the Oracle Cloud and as a private cloud in our customers' datacentre, with the unique ability to move applications and services back and forth between the two."