Software growth "was little better than we expected," Hurd said. "We think we have the people and the services to win a lot of business in the cloud."

For the most part, customers purchasing Oracle's next-generation Fusion Applications are choosing cloud-based deployments, and the bulk of sales are for HCM (human capital management) software, Ellison said.

Oracle had "very strong HCM wins in the quarter" for Fusion, Hurd said. "We're seeing the same ramp now on the [customer relationship management] side."

The IDG News Service