Still, top-line hardware revenues have been in decline. And although the hardware systems business "was very profitable" in fiscal 2012, "the profitability of this business as we measure it did not grow from the prior fiscal year," Oracle said in a recently filed As a result, systems chief John Fowler didn't get a cash bonus, according to the proxy.

Last year, the SPARC SuperCluster T4-4 system. This year, it may feature a sequel to that high-profile release.

It took Oracle a bit longer than hoped-for to bring its next-generation Fusion Applications to market, but the suite of ERP (enterprise resource planning), CRM (customer relationship management), HCM (human capital management) and other software

But Oracle has a number of updates to provide with respect to Fusion, namely the rate of customer adoption and live projects, as well as a public subscription price list for deployments in its recently launched cloud service.

The "top level message" for Fusion Applications will be a "focus on customer adoption and their success," Oracle executive vice president of application development Steve Miranda said during a "Tweet chat" event