Stefan Mileschin

Oracle predicts that software sales growth will stay strong into the new year.
While the rest of the US is worried that there could be big tax hikes and US government spending cuts that could cause Oracle customers to stop buying, it does not seem that the company is too anxious.
Oracle President Safra Catz told investors that businesses were still looking to spend money already allocated to 2012 technology budgets, and this quarter's results were above what Wall Street expected.
She said that Oracle customers were keen to close deals and there is no negative impact on pricing.
Oracle believes that software sales would grow three to 13 percent this quarter. However, it expected fiscal third-quarter hardware products sales to be flat to down 10 percent from a year ago.
Software sales and cloud software subscriptions rose 17 percent from a year earlier to $2.4 billion. It had predicted that new software sales would climb five to 15 percent from a year earlier, when it last reported earnings on September 20.
According to the San Francisco Gate, Oracle posted a second-quarter profit, excluding items, of 64 cents per share, beating the average analyst forecast of 61 cents.
Catz said Oracle's customers are still spending on software and none of the fiscal cliff negotiations in Washington appears to be bothering them, at least for now.
Oracle's troubled hardware division, which it acquired with its $5.6 billion purchase of Sun Microsystems in January 2010, is still not doing that well. The division's revenue has fallen every quarter and this time sales fell 23 percent from a year earlier to $734 million. Oracle had thought that hardware sales would drop between 8 and 18 percent.
Chief Executive Larry Ellison insisted that hardware systems revenue will start growing in the fourth quarter which begins 1 March.

http://news.techeye.net/software/ora...g-sales-growth