New software license revenues, which are considered a key indicator of IT executives' current attitudes toward new projects and spending, jumped 7 percent to $2.4 billion.

Oracle sought to place the hardware results into a certain context, as officials have repeatedly stated the company has no interest in competing in the commodity hardware market, and instead is focusing on specialized systems like the Exadata database machine.

"Hardware revenue for our engineered systems grew 139 percent this quarter and going into Q4, we have a record pipeline," Oracle co-president Mark Hurd said in a statement.

"This past quarter Oracle delivered the hardware and software for our new extreme-performance Exalytics In-Memory Machine," Oracle CEO, Larry Ellison said in another statement. "At the core of Exalytics is our new in-memory database technology capable of instantaneous big data analysis; questions are answered at the speed of thought."

"And unlike SAP's HANA in-memory appliance, Exalytics runs your existing applications," Ellison claimed.