Cloud Computing: Oracle’s hardware hangover continues

Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Barb Darrow.

Oracle’s still fighting to recover, recoup and profit from its $7.4 billion buyout of Sun Microsystems three years ago. In its first quarter, Oracle’s overall hardware business was off 24 percent year over year despite “triple-digit growth” in engineered systems like Exadata.

Oracle’s plan to wring software-like profit from its hardware business still hasn’t panned out nearly three years after it bought Sun Microsystems’ server-and-storage business for $7.4 billion. And that’s got to bug CEO Larry Ellison who is a bear on execution and profitability…

Revenue from Oracle hardware systems sales fell 24 percent to $779 million year over year in both GAAP and non-GAAP terms for Oracle’s first quarter ending August 31. It’s hard to put a pretty face on that, but Oracle tried. Co-president Safra Catz said sales of “engineered systems” — the Exadata, Exalogic data center appliances — grew at triple digit rates. That sounds good but not good enough to offset falling sales of bread-and-butter lower end servers and systems…

Read more from the source @ http://gigaom.com/cloud/oracles-hardware-hangover-continues/