- Oracle software sales down but not as badly as expected
- Database machine is performing well against the competition
- Salesforce.com is cited as the main rival
- All applications will move to on demand as well as on premise
Despite software sales being down, Oracle still remained profitable - posting net income of US$1.9bn on $6.9bn in revenue for the quarter ended May 31. Overall revenue was down 5% from the same quarter last year, with applications new licence revenues standing at $805m. But it wasn't all bad news as even though its applications business in the US was down 22%, it grew grew 5% in Europe, with software licence updates and product support revenues standing at $3.1bn, while services revenues were $1.1bn.
Oracle president Charles Philips said he was confident that the apps business would see an overall uptick. “We’re seeing good upgrade trends,” he said. “If you look at e-business suite version 12, we now have about 26% of our customers who have already upgraded. Vodafone chose Oracle to consolidate and standardise its IT infrastructure across Europe.They’ve adopted an Oracle first strategy for all their new applications, replacing competitive products over time. This is a very good model for other European companies who tend to be more decentralised and we’re encouraged by this important win.