Oracle has been "reacting in a lot more confident way when it comes to pricing and proposals to clients," said Eliot Arlo Colon, president of Miro Consulting, a Woodbridge, New Jersey, firm that helps companies negotiate licensing agreements with the vendor. "Clients who are waiting and holding out for a better deal are finding that next offer is no better, or a little worse."

Miro customers are buying hardware from Oracle, too. "Every client as part of the negotiation wants to have a hardware discussion," Colon said.

The company is seeing deals for Oracle's Exadata database machine "jump substantially," he added. "I don't know if anyone would have predicted it would take hold as quickly as it has," Colon added.

Miro knows of roughly 20 multimillion-dollar Exadata deals that have closed in the past 10 to 12 weeks, both for its own clients and others, Colon said. The firm has even added specialized staff to deal with Exadata-related sales.

Oracle is known for giving significant discounts on software licenses' list price. However, "they're a lot tighter on Exadata than on their other products," Colon said.