This article is more than 1 year old

Hurd clings to Oracle’s cloud growth as overall revenue declines

We’re still in the ‘early innings’ of this game

Mark Hurd, joint chief exec at Oracle, has come out as predictably bullish on the company's cloud prospects, stating in an interview that customers can't get enough of its fluffy white stuff.

Speaking to The Telegraph, Hurd said compared with 12 or 15 months ago "the customer is more excited about and open to the cloud".

He said: "Almost everybody is now thinking about doing something, whereas 15 months ago you probably would have had a lot more uncertainty.”

He said: “Our forecast for this fiscal year is in excess of $1.5bn [£1bn] ... which would make us the largest cloud company in the world [and] so when you look at the numerical evidence of our performance it’s quite good. I still think we’re in the early innings of this.”

However, the comments follow consecutive falls in its quarterly revenue, as Oracle desperately tries to re-brand itself as a cloud business.

During its first quarter results posted last month, overall revenue fell two per cent to $8.4bn (£5.5bn). Cloud SaaS and PaaS revenues were up 34 per cent at $451m on the quarter, while cloud IaaS was up 16 per cent with a $160m (£102m) take.

Joint chief exec Safra Catz told investors last month: "We feel very good about the progress of our cloud transition and clearly customers are migrating to the cloud."

But that growth was offset by falls in other areas of the business, which led to a net income fall of 20 per cent ($1.74bn) for the first quarter, compared with the previous year.

Software license updates and product support, which accounted for a whopping $4.69bn (£3.05bn) of Oracle's $8.4bn total quarterly revenues, and fell one per cent compared with the previous quarter. ®

More about

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like