But revenue from hardware systems fell 24 percent to $779 million. Oracle has been de-emphasizing its efforts to sell commodity servers in favor of higher-margin "engineered systems" that combine Oracle software with servers, networking and storage gear.

In a statement, Oracle President Mark Hurd claimed that sales of Oracle's Exadata, Exalogic, Exalytics and other engineered systems more than doubled. "For the full year, we expect to double engineered systems sales to well over $1 billion. Oracle's new cloud business is also approaching a $1 billion annual run rate. These two businesses will drive Oracle's growth for years to come," he said.

The company sold three times as many Exalogic application server machines as it did in the same quarter last year, Hurd said during the conference call, without giving any actual figures. Oracle's newer Exalytics analytics platform had a "strong ramp," he said.

As for other hardware, Oracle has "the hottest Unix box in the industry" with its Sparc T Series servers, he said. The platform experienced double-digit growth in the quarter, according to Hurd.

Oracle's software sales were helped by acquisitions in the past year, such as of applications vendors Taleo and RightNow.