Welcome to the Cloud Wars Minute — your daily cloud news and commentary show. Each episode provides insights and perspectives around the “reimagination machine” that is the cloud.
In today’s Cloud Wars Minute, I analyze the strong Oracle results that were disclosed after close of the market on Monday for the company’s fiscal second quarter.
Highlights
00:12 — Oracle plays a key role in shaping the future, not living by the rules set by the original three hyper-scalers, resulting in a Q2 boom. Larry Ellison’s statement about the “unimaginable” scale of the AI opportunity underscores the significance of the AI revolution.
01:11 — Oracle’s RPO (Remaining Performance Obligation) increased by 50% to $97 billion, continuing to showcase a huge pipeline and future growth potential. The total cloud revenue for the quarter was up by 24% to $5.9 billion, with cloud infrastructure growth up by 52% to $2.4 billion — albeit on smaller numbers than larger competitors.
02:08 — Oracle has achieved a consistent increase in RPO and total cloud revenue, while winning business from customers who would traditionally have defaulted to Microsoft, Azure, AWS, or Google Cloud. CEO Safra Catz noted the potential for even higher growth rates, reflecting the positive impact of RPO on revenue.
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03:25 — Ellison showed foresight in recognizing the potential of AI, as he has done for decades. He talked about AI agents. Now we’re seeing the evolution of large language models to more precise, industry-specific models. The future of AI is booming, with businesses creating their own AI opportunities and agents.
05:01 — There’s a lot of reason for optimism about Oracle’s continued success and higher growth rates.
