Oracle says cloud biz worth nearly $1bn

Strong cloud sales help software giant top Wall Street expectations for fiscal Q3, but hardware business still weak

Oracle revealed that its cloud business is closing in on the $1bn revenue mark as it unveiled a barnstorming set of fiscal second quarter results.

The software daddy topped Wall Street expectations by announcing a three per cent year-on-year rise in sales to $9.1bn for the three months to 30 November, despite currency headwinds. EMEA sales fell two per cent in dollar terms to $2.7bn.

GAAP net profit jumped by 18 per cent to $2.6bn, while sales of new software licenses and cloud software subscriptions rocketed by 17 per cent to $2.4bn.

Oracle president Mark Hurd said that applications, middleware and database all enjoyed double-digit growth in new software license and cloud subscriptions, with applications heading the field with growth topping 30 per cent.

He also boasted that Oracle's cloud offering of HCM, CRM and ERP applications - plus its Oracle database and Java platform services - are the "strongest in the industry".

"Already approaching a one billion dollar run rate, our cloud business will become much bigger over time."

Software license updates and product support revenues rose seven per cent to $4.3bn.

Oracle's slide down the server rankings since it acquired Sun has been well documented and hardware systems products revenues fell by 23 per cent to $734m in Q2 - more than the eight to 18 per cent forecast.

However, Oracle chief executive Larry Elison (pictured) claimed that Sun had been one of the firm's "most strategic and profitable acquisitions we have ever made", hinting that its hardware business would soon return to growth.

"I believe that products like Exadata and the SPARC SuperCluster will not only continue to drive improved profitability in our hardware business, by the end of this fiscal year, they will also drive growth in our hardware business," he said.