Oracle also signed a number of large deals "with some of the biggest names in cloud computing," including Salesforce.com, CEO Larry Ellison said in a statement.

With the purchase of Sun Microsystems, Oracle has embarked on a strategy to sell customers on integrated systems spanning hardware and software, a la the IBM of old.

Oracle has been aggressively going after IBM as well as Hewlett-Packard, with the latest salvo being its decision, announced this week, to . HP's Integrity servers are based on Itanium processors.

The company of late is feeling its oats down to the salesperson level, one expert said in an interview Thursday, prior to the results' release.