Oracle Rises as Q3 Results Beat Street, $10 Billion Share Buyback | Re/code

Perhaps time for Salesforce to reconsider the rumored Microsoft acquisition offer; also see Larry Ellison explains why Microsoft and Amazon are going for Oracle's throat (Business Insider)

"Revenue from cloud services — both software as a service and a computing platform as a service — rose 57 percent year on year to reach $583 million, or 61 percent on a constant currency basis. Cloud infrastructure sales at $152 million were down slightly, but would have risen without the effect of currencies.

Sales of old-school on-premise software fell 4 percent to $6.3 billion and would have been flat year on year without the currencies.

In a statement, CEO Safra Catz said the accelerating growth in Oracle’s still relatively new cloud business pushed its gross margin to 51 percent, up from 43 percent in the prior year. The target, she said, is 80 percent. “Our cloud business is now in a hyper-growth phase,” she said."

Oracle Rises as Q3 Results Beat Street, $10 Billion Share Buyback | Re/code