Sun contributes $400m to Oracle Q4 income

It has been a boom quarter for Oracle, according to the latest figures released by the software giant. Oracle announced on Friday that its revenues for its fourth quarter, which ended on 31st May, had increased by 39% to $9.5 billion. Shares in Oracle are up to 46 cents each, an increase of 24% on last year’s figures for the same quarter.

In the breakdown, it is clear that new software licenses are driving up revenue, with revenues in this area increasing by 14% to $3.1 billion. Meanwhile, license updates and product support revenues were a close second, increasing by 12% to $3.4 billion. Operating income was up by 14% to $3.3 billion, the operating margin was 35%, and the net income was up by 25%, reaching $2.4 billion.

Oracle’s Safra Catz said that Sun Microsystems had been a big part of that quarter’s success, following its acquisition by Oracle early this year. She said: “We estimate that Sun contributed over $400m to non-GAAP operating income in our Q4.”

Oracle President Charles Phillips was optimistic about the company’s market dominance, boosted by the figures. He said: “We continue to take large chunks of market share away from SAP.

“Over the past twelve months Oracle's applications business has grown 5% on a constant dollar basis, while SAP's business has declined 24% over their previous four quarters.

The big cheese, Larry Ellison, was again preoccupied with competition with major rival IBM, and in this area, Oracle is gaining ground. He said: “Version 2 of our Sun Exadata database machine outperforms IBM's fastest computer in both data warehousing and transaction processing.”

This means, according to Ellison, that some of IBM’s biggest customers started buying Exadata machines instead of IBM servers in Q4, helping contribute to the boost.