Oracle has unveiled disappointing third-quarter results, with total revenues down one per cent to $9bn (£5.92bn) and new software licences and cloud subscriptions down two per cent to $2.3bn (£1.5bn).
Oracle chief financial officer Safra Catz attributed the unexpected decline in sales to the influx of inexperienced new sales staff. "Since we've been adding literally thousands of new sales reps around the world, the problem was largely sales execution, especially with the new reps as they ran out of runway in the third quarter," said Catz.
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However, the declines were almost across the board, with hardware systems products - the old Sun Microsystems business - reporting a 23 per cent decline in revenue from $869m (£570m) to $671m (£440m) and services revenues falling by eight per cent to $1.045bn (£690m).
Only an increase in software licence updates - organisations upgrading their software - of seven per cent prevented a bigger headline fall in revenues.
Operating income and net income, though, were broadly flat - net income for the third quarter weighed in at $2.5bn (£1.65bn).
Oracle founder and CEO Larry Ellison attempted to gloss over the sharp fall in hardware revenues by emphasising the release of new Sparc-based servers. "This month we will begin deliveries of servers based on our new Sparc T5 microprocessor: the fastest microprocessor in the world," said Ellison.
He added: "The new T5 servers can have up to eight microprocessors, while our new M5 system can be configured with up to 32 microprocessors. The M5 runs the Oracle database 10 times faster than the M9000 it replaces."
Oracle president Mark Hurd, meanwhile, claimed that software-as-a-service revenues more than doubled.
