Oracle is continuing to grow both its software and its hardware business, though not quite as much as it had originally forecast.
Oracle (ORCL: NASDAQ) reported second quarter fiscal 2012 earnings after the close of market on Tuesday. Revenues came in at $8.8 billion for a 2 percent year-over-year gain. The company reported Non-GAAP Earnings Per Share (EPS) of 54 cents for a 6 percent year-over-year gain. Wall Street had expected revenues of $9.23 billion on EPS of 57 cents.
Oracle’s software and support revenues both grew during the quarter. New software license revenues grew 2 percent to $2 billion, while product support revenues and software license updates rose by 9 percent to $4 billion. Hardware systems products revenues came in at $953 million for a 14 percent year-over-year decline.
Oracle CEO Larry Ellison isn’t too worried about the drop. During the company’s earning call, he stressed that the hardware business is growing where it counts. During the second quarter, Oracle sold over 200 Exadata database machines and Exalogic middleware and application systems. The engineered systems include pre-integrated hardware and software that Oracle said provides better performance and scale.
Ellison said that by the fourth quarter, the plan is to sell over 400 Exadata and Exalogic engineered systems per quarter. “That would make our annualized Q4 engineered system sales approximately $1 billion,” he said. “As our engineered systems business gets larger, it will drive revenue growth in our overall hardware business.”
Read the full story at EnterpriseAppsToday:
Oracle Earnings Disappoint Market, Ellison Unfazed
Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of the IT Business Edge Network, the network for technology professionals. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist
