Oracle has reported a small rise in overall revenues for its most recent fiscal quarter, driven by strong software revenue growth of 7%, over the same quarter last year.
Total software sales were $8 billion for the quarter, with revenue split evenly between new license sales and software support services.
However, hardware sales fell by 16% to $977 million in the quarter, with total hardware revenue, including support, down 14% to $1.5 billion.
The EMEA region proved to be Oracle’s worst performing geography in the quarter. While revenues from the Americas rose 5% to £5.7 billion, and Asia Pacific revenue grew by 6% to $1.8 billion, EMEA revenues were down 7% to $3.3 billion from $3.5 billion the previous year.
Once again, Oracle talked up its "engineered systems" range, which combines Sun Microsystems hardware with Oracle software. President Mark Hurd said sales of engineered systems "grew over 100% year-over-year."
CEO Larry Ellison insisted that the combination of Oracle’s cloud services, which it re-announced earlier this month, and its "engineered systems" would "drive Oracle’s growth in FY 2013".
Clearly, though, sales of pre-existing Sun products are in serious decline.
Oracle’s executive vice president for sales Keith Block is leaving the company, it was recently revealed. News agency Reuters reported today disparaging comments from Block about Sun’s hardware were revealed in court filings in Oracle’s ongoing dispute with HP.
"Nobody talks about Sun. Even the Sun customers," Block reportedly told a colleague over instant messaging. "It’s dead, dead, dead."