Mark Hurd, former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, made one of his first official appearances as the new president of enterprise systems vendor Oracle yesterday, as the company announced a strong performance in its most recent financial quarter.

Revenues rose 48% year-on-year to $7.5 billion in the three months ending August 31 2010. Net income, meanwhile, grew 18% to $1.4 billion.

Much of Oracle’s revenue increase derived from the addition of Sun Microsystems, which it acquired this year, but there was new business too: sales of new software licenses rose 25% to $1.3 billion.  

Announcing the results, Hurd revealed that the company will unveil two new products that combine Sun hardware and Oracle software at the company’s OpenWorld conference next week.

He also said that Oracle will spend $4 billion on research and development. “Our already robust product portfolio is only going to get stronger,” he said.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal earlier this week, IBM chief executive Sam Palmasino was asked whether he considered HP or Oracle a greater competitive threat. His answer was the latter, citing Oracle’s continued investment in technology. “Oracle invests,” Palmasino said.