In today’s Cloud Wars Minute, I explore Oracle’s blowout Q1 and the numbers signaling its growing power in AI and cloud infrastructure.
Highlights
00:03 — Yesterday, Oracle reported what I’m calling a blowout Q1, and let me talk about some of the key numbers here that formed that impression for me. Its overall cloud revenue was up 62% to over $11 billion. It breaks that out in two ways. Its cloud apps business grew about 10%, a little over $4 billion in revenue.
00:26 — But this is the star now: the cloud infrastructure business grew 121% to $7.4 billion. And that is, of course, revenue — a measure of the recent past.
00:54 — Its RPO, which is similar to backlog or pipeline, but it’s fully contracted business, was up 46% to $664 billion. So, its revenue for the most recent quarter grows, its RPO for future business is also growing very rapidly. Plus, the company guided in Q2 that its cloud revenue will grow again, accelerate again, going into Q2.
02:28 — So, Microsoft’s current cloud revenue is about five times larger than Oracle’s cloud revenue, right? So, much bigger. And you might say, well, it’s got a much bigger cloud revenue right now; its RPO or backlog is probably on a similar level. But, Oracle has almost matched the RPO or backlog that Microsoft has: Oracle, $664 billion; Microsoft, $678 billion.
03:37 — More and more customers now are betting that while some of the other cloud vendors have been very strong and the dominant players coming up, Oracle is going to be an even bigger player going into the future. I think that’s a big part of what these numbers tell us.
