New software sales increased 17 percent over the year-earlier period. The one sore spot was hardware: Sales for the hardware business, which Oracle acquired from Sun Microsystems last year, dropped 5 percent to $1 billion.

"In our opinion, Oracle's results were respectable, but not spectacular," said Richard Davis in a research note from Canaccord Genuity. "These results reflect good execution on the software front and macro headwinds on the more discretionary/longer payback period hardware side of the equation. The quarter also generally mirrors what we expect to hear this earnings season from other software companies: better than feared results, an after-hours and next day pop in the stock, and unless the numbers are spectacular, a gradual retracement of much of this relief rally trade. "

Other enterprise software vendors also issued upbeat results. Tibco, for example, reported net income that rose year over year to $23.5 million from $17.4 million. Excluding one-time items, Tibco generated $0.23 earnings per share, beating the $0.21 EPS estimate by analysts polled by Thomson Reuters. Revenue rose 24 percent to $229 million, $9 million higher than expectations.

"Markets will rise. Markets will fall. But some changes are unstoppable," said Tibco CEO Vivek Y. Ranadivé on the , referring to growing requirements for businesses to use realtime software platforms. "If you're actually selling something that people want today, you are in pretty good shape."

Other software companies reporting quarterly earnings this week included: