However, that success in the cloud has helped offset currency headwinds and the continued slowdown of its traditional software business.
During the quarter, Oracle's profits rose to $2.81 billion, or 66 cents per share, up from $2.76 billion, or 62 cents per share, in the same period a year ago. Adjusted for certain items, earnings of 81 cents were a penny under Wall Street analyst estimates.
Total revenue fell 1% to $10.59 billion, but topped analyst estimates of $10.47 billion.
Oracle is beefing up its presence in the cloud in an effort to compete with the likes of Salesforce and
The company doesn't see this breakneck growth stopping anytime soon. "We expect that the SaaS and PaaS hyper-growth we experienced in FY16 will continue on for the next few years," said founder and executive chairman Larry Ellison in prepared remarks. "That gives us a fighting chance to be the first cloud company to reach $10 billion in SaaS and PaaS revenue."
Oracle has been quickly growing its customer base and in the three months ending May 31, added more than 1,600 new SaaS customers and more than 2,000 new PaaS customers. This prompted the company to project that revenue from the two divisions will surge between 75% and 80% during the first quarter.
Meanwhile, Oracle's traditional on-premise software business has slowed, and revenue was flat at $8.4 billion during the quarter. It still makes up three quarters of Oracle's total revenues, however.
Shares of Oracle, which are up 6% this year, rose 2% to $39.60 in after-hours trading on Thursday.
