Oracle basks in the Sun with Q4 results

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Enterprise software vendor Oracle has announced revenues (turnover) of $9.5 billion (£6.38 billion) this week after its first full quarter since taking over Sun Microsystems.

Revenues are up 39 per cent for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2010. New software licence sales grew 14 per cent to $3.1 billion.

The company estimated the quarter showed a contribution from Sun of approximately $400 million to operating profits.

Oracle president, Safra Catz, said: “This [contribution] compares with a loss in Sun’s quarter ending June of last year, when Sun was an independent company.”

“Now that Sun is profitable, we have increased confidence that we will meet or exceed our goal of Sun contributing $1.5 billion to non-GAAP operating income in [fiscal year] 2011 and $2.0 billion in [fiscal year] 2012.”

Year-on-year Oracle revenues were up 15 per cent to $26.8 billion, with a rise of six per cent for software licences, to $7.5 billion.

Another Oracle president, Charles Phillips, took the opportunity to dig at Oracle’s major rival.

“We continue to take large chunks of market share away from SAP,” he claimed.

“Over the last twelve months Oracle’s applications business has grown five per cent on a constant dollar basis while SAP’s business has declined 24 per cent over their previous four quarters. This trend has been going on for a long time.”

Oracle's strong results come at a time when enterprise software budgets remain under pressure. Industry analysts Gartner said last week that the market for supply chain management software, for example, contracted by 0.7 per cent in 2009.

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