Oracle just released its fiscal 2014 fourth-quarter earnings report.

It reported Q4 adjusted EPS of 92 cents and revenue of $11.3 billion. 

Analysts were expecting 95 cents per share on $11.48 billion in revenue. So that's an all-around miss.

The stock is dropping in after-hours trading.

Oracle's sales increased 3%, which is good. But analysts were expecting a healthy year-over-year nearly 5% increase in sales this quarter, which is historically Oracle's biggest as salespeople push to close deals and make their year-end quotas and bonuses.

This was also its fiscal fourth quarter. For the year, Oracle reported $2.87 EPS (excluding special items) and $38.3 billion in revenue. Analysts were looking for $2.91 in earnings per share for the year on $38.45 billion in revenue.

So that's another all-around miss.

Last year, it also reported a miss on revenue, both for the fourth quarter and for the year, although it was spot on with profits. It reported 87 cents EPS for the quarter and $2.68 EPS for the year. It brought in $10.95 billion in revenue for the quarter and $37.18 billion for the year. 

Oracle has been struggling off and on to meet revenue targets for a while now and spent much of its fiscal 2013 in cost-cutting mode, analysts told Business Insider. One analyst told us that many employees didn't get their full 2013 bonuses or any bonus at all.

As for its fiscal 2014, that's been hit or miss, too, particularly on revenues. Last quarter: a miss, the quarter before that, a much-needed beat, and the previous three quarters, all misses. 

Oracle declared cash dividend of $0.12.

For the quarter:

• Software and Cloud revenues were up 4% to $8.9 billion. GAAP Cloud software-as-a-service (SaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS) revenues were up 25% to $322 million, while non-GAAP SaaS and PaaS revenues were up 23% to $327 million. In addition, Cloud infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) revenues were up 13% to $128 million.
• New software licenses revenues were flat at $3.8 billion.
• Software license updates and product support revenues were up 7% to $4.7 billion.
• Hardware systems revenues were up 2% to $1.5 billion with hardware systems products up 2% to $870 million, and hardware systems support up 2% to $596 million.

For the year: 

• Total revenues were up 3% at $38.3 billion.
• GAAP Software and Cloud revenues were up 5%. GAAP Cloud SaaS and PaaS revenues were up 23% to $1.1 billion while Cloud IaaS revenues were $456 million.
• New software licenses revenues were flat at $9.4 billion.
• Software license updates and product support revenues were up 6% to $18.2 billion.
• Total hardware system revenues were flat at $5.4 billion.

 Here's the press release:

REDWOOD SHORES, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 06/19/14 -- Oracle Corporation (ORCL) today announced that fiscal 2014 Q4 total revenues were up 3% to $11.3 billion. Software and Cloud revenues were up 4% to $8.9 billion. GAAP Cloud software-as-a-service (SaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS) revenues were up 25% to $322 million, while non-GAAP SaaS and PaaS revenues were up 23% to $327 million. In addition, Cloud infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) revenues were up 13% to $128 million. New software licenses revenues were unchanged at $3.8 billion. Software license updates and product support revenues were up 7% to $4.7 billion. Overall hardware systems revenues were up 2% to $1.5 billion with hardware systems products up 2% to $870 million, and hardware systems support up 2% to $596 million.

In Q4, both GAAP and non-GAAP earnings per share were lowered by $0.02 due to a non-operating loss caused by exchange rate changes in Venezuela. Furthermore, last year's Q4 GAAP earnings per share increased $0.04 because of a $269 million acquisition price reduction. As a result of these two factors, Q4 GAAP earnings per share were unchanged at $0.80 compared with last year, while GAAP net income was down 4% to $3.6 billion, and GAAP operating income was down 2% to $4.9 billion. Q4 GAAP operating margin was 43% in the quarter. Non-GAAP earnings per share were up 6% to $0.92, but would have been $0.94 if not for the currency loss in Venezuela. Non-GAAP net income was up 2% to $4.2 billion while non-GAAP operating income was up 3% to $5.8 billion. The non-GAAP operating margin was 51%. GAAP operating cash flow on a trailing twelve-month basis was $14.9 billion.

For fiscal year 2014, total revenues were up 3% at $38.3 billion. GAAP Software and Cloud revenues were up 5%. GAAP Cloud SaaS and PaaS revenues were up 23% to $1.1 billion while Cloud IaaS revenues were $456 million. New software licenses revenues were unchanged at $9.4 billion while software license updates and product support revenues were up 6% to $18.2 billion. Total hardware system revenues were flat at $5.4 billion. GAAP operating income was up 1% to $14.8 billion, and GAAP operating margin was 39%. Non-GAAP operating income was up 3% to $18.1 billion, and non-GAAP operating margin was 47%. GAAP net income was unchanged at $11.0 billion, while non-GAAP net income was up 2% to $13.2 billion. GAAP earnings per share were $2.38, up 5% compared to last year while non-GAAP earnings per share were $2.87, up 7%.

"Our cloud subscription business is now approaching a run rate of $2 billion a year," said Oracle President and CFO Safra Catz. "As our business has transitioned, more software revenues are being recognized over the life of a subscription rather than upfront. We're making this transition to cloud subscriptions and ratable revenue recognition while continuously increasing our top-line revenue and our bottom-line profits year-after-year."

"We have transformed Sun's commodity hardware business into a profitable and growing Engineered Systems business," said Oracle President Mark Hurd. "Our overall hardware business grew 2% in constant currency this past year. We saw record levels of Engineered Systems shipments and expect to deliver our 10,000th unit in Q1."

"Oracle is now the second largest SaaS company in the world," said Oracle CEO Larry Ellison. "In SaaS, we're in front of everybody but salesforce.com. In IaaS we're larger and more profitable than Rackspace. We have by far the most complete portfolio of modern SaaS and PaaS products in the industry: CRM: Sales, Service & Marketing; HCM: HR, Payroll & Talent; ERP: Accounting, Procurement, Supply Chain & more. All these SaaS products run on the world's most powerful PaaS: the Oracle in-memory multitenant database and Java. We plan to increase our focus on the Cloud and become number one in both the SaaS and the PaaS businesses."

The Board of Directors declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.12 per share of outstanding common stock. This dividend will be paid to stockholders of record as of the close of business on July 9, 2014, with a payment date of July 30, 2014. 

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Kit Malthouse, a deputy mayor for London, gave a startling speech about Oracle on Wednesday during London Technology Week.

He blasted the company and appealed to the crowd to help him “take Oracle down," reports the Wall Street Journal's Lisa Fleisher:

“Like most people in government, I’ve been screwed by Oracle,” Malthouse said Wednesday, to rousing laughter from the hundred or so people in the room. ...

He said the top priority was to “take Oracle down.”

He was only sort of joking.

This idea was formed in 2010 when London under pressure to save money and implement "austerity measures" and wanted Oracle to lower its prices.

Oracle, knowing the city wouldn't (and probably couldn't) yank out its Oracle database and use a competitor, didn't budge much.

Malthouse realized, “We found ourselves in a situation where there wasn’t really anywhere else to go.”

And that's the love-hate world of enterprise software.

Oracle knows that database is the heart of IT and there's a reason that it makes the most popular one in the world. Oracle has a 48% market share of the most-used kind of database (called, in geek speak, a relational database), according to market researcher Trefis.

Oracle's database works well even under the most demanding circumstances. So an enterprise won't lightly make a decision to replace it. Such a project would be costly, difficult, and full of risk.

Plus there's only a handful of other databases that could perform on par with Oracle, such as IBM's DB2 and, arguably, Microsoft's SQL Server. Enterprise software license contracts with IBM and Microsoft are also complicated and can grow more expensive over time.

At U.S. government agencies, there's pressure to cut costs by using "open-source" databases, InformationWeek reports. 

That's only partially helpful because Oracle owns the most popular open-source database, too, MySQL, acquired when Oracle bought Sun Microsystems in 2010.

Some U.S. agencies are turning to alternatives like the the open-source PostgreSQL database, buying support from a company called EnterpriseDB. PostgreSQL is currently the forth most popular database behind Oracle, MySQL, and Microsoft SQL Server, according to DB-Engines.com.

There was a moment last year when it looked like PostgreSQL could have become a bigger threat to Oracle. Salesforce.com, a huge and important Oracle customer, was publicly toying with dumping Oracle for PostgreSQL. That would have signaled to other enterprises to look at PostgreSQL, too.

But it could have been just a negotiation tactic. Shortly after news leaked on Salesforce.com's PostgreSQL plans, Oracle and Salesforce announced a huge partnership in which Salesforce.com agreed to buy Oracle's database for about another decade. Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff said the deal would cut his costs for his database infrastructure in half.

Malthouse, however, wants a British company to create an Oracle-killer database, he told Fleisher.

“I want someone in London to crack the Oracle lock that they have,” he said. “Oracle seems to be the only people who can handle data on that vast volume.”

The problem is, it simply isn't that easy to take on Oracle. 

Oracle declined comment on this topic but it did just report fourth-quarter and year-end earnings. 

New software licenses revenues were flat for the quarter at $3.8 billion and flat for the year at $9.4 billion, over the year-ago periods.

So like Malthouse, its customers are not yanking out their databases. But new business aren't exactly flocking to the software giant, either.

SEE ALSO: The 20 hottest startups from Israel in 2014

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Oracle CEO Larry Ellison  had a great explanation as to why the company missed fourth-quarter and full-year revenue expectations: Oracle is actually kicking butt.

It sold a lot of new cloud-computing contracts and that revenue won't show up right away, he explained to Wall Street analysts on the company's quarterly conference call.

Another fourth-quarter miss for Oracle is particularly shocking. That's always the company's biggest quarter, as salespeople push to close deals and make their annual quotas and bonuses.

To be fair, Oracle didn't have a bad quarter or year. It grew sales 3% for the year, to a record $38.3 billion. It dropped $13.2 billion to the bottom line in net income (non-GaaP, excluding unusual items), up 2% over last year. 

Still, this is two years in a row that Oracle missed Wall Street's expectations for its fourth quarter instead of meeting, or even exceeding, them.

And investors were not pleased. The stock tanked in after-hours trading. It's currently down about 5% to about $40 a share, compared to Thursday's closing price of $42.51.

Why More Cloud Is Bad For Revenue, Good For Business

But Ellison and CFO Safra Catz had a good explanation: the company is selling a lot of cloud services, in some cases instead of regular software.

For the first time, Oracle broke out how well its cloud services are doing: The Software-as-a-Service and Platform-as-a-Service clouds were up 23% to $1.1 billion (on a GAAP basis), while the Infrastructure-as-a-Service revenues were $456 million for the year.

That's still a pittance compared to Oracle's software business: $9.4 billion worth of new software licenses revenues for the year (flat over last year) and $18.2 billion worth of product support and license updates, up 6%.

Still, selling a lot of cloud will make a company look like its revenue has stalled.

With a software contract, the revenue is recognized right away. But the cloud is a subscription billed over time. Revenue is only recognized when the monthly/quarterly/annual bill is paid.

But cloud is better for a software company over the long haul. Customers will pay more money for it over time. They save in other ways, because they don't need to buy hardware.

Eye On The Profitable Cloud, Not The Cheap One

There are three types of cloud-computing services, and Ellison wants Oracle to dominate two of them because they are the most profitable.

"Oracle is focused like a laser on one goal over the next few years: becoming the No. 1 company in cloud computing in the two most profitable segments: Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS)," Ellison said.

SaaS is when companies rent software applications over a network like the internet. Salesforce.com is the best-known SaaS company. PaaS is when companies use the cloud to host the apps that they've written. This is what app developers use.

The third is called Infrastructure-as-a-Service. It's currently dominated by Amazon, which keeps cutting prices, making it a low-margin game.

IaaS is when companies rent servers and operating systems and run whatever software they want on that. Oracle offers IaaS, too, but Ellison is not keen on pushing that business, he said.

That's because he'll reel in 40% to 50% margins for SaaS and PaaS, he says, the same margins as Oracle is making now selling software. It can do that because Oracle owns all the pieces necessary to run a cloud, including the hardware, the development software (Java), the database and the apps.

"We buy electricity and buildings, everything else we make. We think we can deliver these cloud serves without compromising margins whatsoever," he said.

A Better Way To Prove Success

Still, if Oracle really wants to convince investors that it owns the cloud, there's an another way to do it: Show them the money.

In addition to reporting cloud revenues on its individual services, it could showcase cloud bookings, backlog or Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR), or some other figure that indicates the amount of money under contract, not yet billed.

If that number takes off, so will investor confidence in Oracle's future.

SEE ALSO: A guide to understanding the cloud computing business

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On Monday Oracle officially announced a $5.3 billion deal to buy a company called Micros Systems.

This is the biggest acquisition Oracle has made since it closed Sun Microsystems for $7.4 billion in 2010 (which actually cost Oracle $5.6 billion after factoring in Sun's cash. With this deal, it actually cost $4.6 billion net of Micros’ cash, Oracle said.)

Oracle paid $68 per share, slightly higher than the rumored $67-and-change price expected, and a nice price for Micros shareholders. The stock had been trading near the $58 mark for the past few days and under $53 for most of April and much of May.

Word of the deal broke last week, right before Oracle released its forth-quarter earnings.

Micros makes software and hardware for the hospitality and retail industries, including "point of sale" cash register tech. It has some huge clients, including the Hilton, Hyatt and Marriott hotel chains.

The latest wave in the POS industry is to replace these devices with tablets, and Micros offers a Windows tablet for this purpose. So, this deal also gives Oracle a tablet.

Interestingly, Micros was already a big Oracle partner, had been helping it sell its database to hospitality businesses for the past 15 years, Oracle said.

Some Wall Street analysts think this was a a defensive move to keep up-and-coming cloud competitors away from Oracle's customers: Matthew Healey, an analyst at TBR, wrote in a research note:

The urgency with which Oracle is evaluating solutions for the retail and hospitality industry indicates that the acquisition of Micros Systems is a defensive move to protect Oracle’s install base [from] other providers such as SAP and Salesforce.com.

But mostly, the acquisition is about buying revenue growth. The hospitality industry is in the midst of a tech revolution, moving from PC-based systems to tablets and cloud software.

In May, Micros reported third-quarter revenue of $349 million, up about 11%, year-over-year. Revenue for the nine-month period was a little over $1 billion, up 7.4% and it dropped $142 million to the bottom line as profits (non-GAAP) for the nine months of the year, so far. It also upped its guidance for the full year, expecting between $1.36 billion - $1.385 billion in revenue and non-GAAP EPS from $2.53 to $2.57.

“We expect this transaction to be immediately accretive to Oracle’s earnings on a non-GAAP basis and to expand over time,” said Oracle President and CFO Safra Catz.

Oracle's fourth quarter and year-end was a disappointment to investors. It was a two-year-in-a-row miss on Wall Street expectations on revenue growth for both the quarter and the year.

Oracle blamed the miss on its transition to cloud services, in which revenue is recognized as it is paid, not when contracts are signed, making it look like the company's growth has slowed.

Some analysts, such as TBR's Healey were good with that explanation and others were more skeptical. For instance, Pat Walravens, an analyst at JMP Securities, wrote in a research note:

While management engaged in a lengthy discussion about the shift toward the cloud, we think it is clear that, even accounting for a shift in revenue recognition, Oracle did not execute particularly well in the quarter, coming in at the low end of its guidance range for revenue, license, and hardware and generating billings growth (which captures the impact of revenue deferrals) of 3%, below consensus of 5%. We think investors should remain cautious on this name as Oracle faces tough and focused competitors in each cloud product category (including Amazon Web Services, Workday, and salesforce.com) and needs to execute better and more consistently.

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In one of the biggest acquisitions to hit the payments space in recent years, enterprise technology giant Oracle announced Monday it would pay $5.3 billion in cash for Micros Systems, a leading provider of payment terminal software and hardware in the restaurant and hospitality space. 

Oracle, which is known for its acquisition-based growth strategy, gets a healthy business out of the acquisition, with Micros posting roughly 20% operating margins.

But experts believe there’s more to the deal. 

“By acquiring Micros, Oracle is gaining an instant customer base and domain expertise in the hospitality and retail industries,” Morningstar analyst Rick Summer writes in an investor note obtained by BI Intelligence.

“Oracle may be better able to sell database and analytics products to Micros’ customer base, totaling more than 330,000 installation sites,” Summer adds. 

Jason Oxman, CEO of industry group the Electronic Transactions Association, agrees that for Oracle, the deal is all about Micros’ merchant relationships. “This acquisition shows the importance of direct relationships with merchants through their point of sale systems,” Oxman told BI Intelligence in an email.

“The ‘cash register’ was once just a cash drawer and UPC scanner,” Mr. Oxman writes. But, “today payments companies are integrating software solutions, including inventory, loyalty, and payments, into point of sale.”

This post first appeared on BI Intelligence, a research service from Business Insider. Sign up today and receive Payments Insider, a new AM briefing for payments executives, every morning in your inbox.

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It's no secret that Silicon Valley is dominated by men.

President Obama has even called on women to go into tech and other STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields.

The tech community has finally realized it has a diversity problem. Google recently announced it would offer vouchers for coding lessons for women and minorities.

But women have been in the tech industry (albeit in relatively small numbers) for some time now. Some of those women have risen up to lucrative leadership positions in the C-suite and elsewhere.

11. Lucy Peng, CPO, Alibaba

Lucy Peng, an Alibaba founder, became the company's chief people officer in June after successfully growing its small lending and microfinance operations.

Alibaba has been in the news a lot recently. The multifaceted e-commerce company recently announced an initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange, claiming a value of around $120 billion. For reference, Amazon is worth approximately $137 billion.

We won't know Peng's salary until Alibaba files with the SEC this year, but her fortunes will undoubtedly skyrocket when the company completes its IPO.

Peng isn't the only one who stands to benefit from the IPO. Yahoo owns a large stake in Alibaba and is expected to make around $10 million when the company goes public.

10. Angela Ahrendts, SVP of Retail and Online Stores, Apple

Angela Ahrendts cut her teeth at Burberry, where she rose to CEO, before joining Apple this year as head of retail and online stores, a role created just for her. She's the first woman to join CEO Tim Cook's executive team.

It's unclear how much she'll make at Apple, but the company has awarded her $76 million in stock (based on its current value) that vests over the next four years. Tim Cook pulled in around $4.5 million in 2013, so we can expect Ahrendts' annual compensation to be in the $2 million to $3 million range.

9. Amy Hood, CFO, Microsoft

Amy Hood became Microsoft's CFO last May and reports to CEO Satya Nadella. Her total compensation neared $7.5 million.

Before transitioning to CFO, Hood led Microsoft's business team in acquiring big names like Skype and Yammer.

She also holds an MBA from Harvard and worked at Goldman Sachs before joining Microsoft in 2002.

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison has been awarded 3 million stock options this year, down from the 7 million shares he's been awarded each of the past seven years, the Financial Times reports.

It marks a victory for shareholders and shareholders rights who have used "say on pay" votes the past two years to express disapproval to Oracle's board over Ellison's pay package.

Ellison received the biggest pay package of any American CEO last year, making $76.9 million, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Charles Elson, professor of corporate governance at the University of Delaware, tells the Financial Times that Oracle's decision to cut his options is significant, especially since it comes during a time when the stock is up 25%.

"He has so much stock in the company, pay for him is irrelevant at this point — it became irrelevant a long time ago, except as a scorecard," Elson tells FT.

Oracle has also cut option awards to other top executives.

The decision comes at a time when top American CEOs are making an average of 300 times more than their average employee.

SEE ALSO: CEOs Are Back To Earning 300x More Than Their Employees

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Oracle on Thursday announced it was acquiring 500-employee TOA Technologies for an undisclosed sum.

TOA Technologies offers a cloud service that manages "field service" employees, such as fleets delivery drivers or repair technicians l (i.e. the cable guy). Oracle will add TOA to its cloud, stitching it into Oracle's cloud Enterprise Resource Planning apps (ERP). ERP is financial planning software.

Although Oracle's longstanding rival SAP is the company best known for ERP software, this acquisition is less about SAP and more about Oracle's latest No. 1 rival: Salesforce.com.

Salesforce.com is best known for its cloud software that helps salespeople do their jobs. But it also has cloud software for other corporate jobs including something called "Service Cloud" for customers service people.

When a customer service rep needs to dispatch a repair person, Service Cloud taps into third-party apps for that, reports Computerworld. Options include ServiceMax, ClickWorkforce, or TOA.

TOA built a version of its software on Salesforce's cloud, Force.com, made specifically for Salesforce.com's customers. So, by buying TOA, Oracle not only gets its own field service cloud, it gains leads for a chunk of Salesforce's customers, those using TOA with Salesforce.com.

Oracle wants those Salesforce.com customers. "We are Salesforce.com's primary competitor ... and we are going to pass Salesforce in cloud," CEO Larry Ellison told analysts during the company's last quarterly conference call.

Oracle has used this tactic before to attack Salesforce.com. Last year, for instance, it bought a startup named Compendium, founded by one of the cofounders of ExactTarget. Salesforce.com had bought ExactTarget for $2.5 billion, its largest-ever acquisition, and credits ExactTarget for much of its recent revenue growth.

What's interesting about this rivalry is that Salesforce.com is also one of Oracle's biggest cloud customers. Ellison takes credit for helping invent Salesforce.com and providing seed funds. But several years ago the relationship with his former employee, Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff, soured and the two companies are now fierce competitors.

We don't know what Oracle paid, but Ellison is not known for low-balling acquisitions. TOA raised $96.2 million total according to CrunchBase, including a $66 million series E in 2013 and had $41 million in sales in 2012, according to Cleveland.com.

TOA is headquartered in Beachwood, Ohio, (near Cleveland) and was founded by Israeli immigrants Yuval Brisker and Irad Carmi in 2003.

SEE ALSO: Here's How Larry Ellison Invented Cloud Computing

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Thirty-year Oracle veteran Roger Bamford has left Oracle for database upstart MongoDB.

Bamford was a key engineer who helped Oracle build its flagship database software and then went on to create other key database products. For instance, he was the guy behind something called "Oracle's Real Application Clusters."

This is one of the technologies that Oracle CEO Larry Ellison keeps talking up, making the latest version of database work well for cloud computing.

MongoDB is a different kind of database, born and raised to cloud computing as well as web apps and "big data" apps. 

NoSQL began life as a supplement to a traditional "SQL" database like Oracle. NoSQL handles the kinds of things that Oracle (and other SQL databases) don't do well. It can work with messy data like documents or tweets and can be used across clusters of low-cost computer servers.

Oracle's database prefers the data to be neat and structured and all in one place. That's why Oracle bought Sun Microsystems, to make bigger more powerful computer servers able to run bigger more powerful versions of its database.

Until recently, makers of noSQL databases said their tech didn't really compete with Oracle's because it fits different needs.

"Traditional relational databases are not going to go away," Dwight Merriman, cofounder of MongoDB told Business Insider back in 2012.

But lately other noSQL competitors have been challenging that perception, saying they are increasingly competing with Oracle and winning customers.

We've heard from one Oracle salesperson, too, who said she had a hard time selling an expensive Oracle database to midsize companies because they are often choosing MongoDB instead.

Oracle has responded by offering its own noSQL database, with mixed success. Oracle's flagship database is by far the most popular database out there, but MongoDB is by far the most popular noSQL. MongoDB is No. 5, and the only noSQL database in the top five most popular databases, according to DB-Engines, a site that tracks such things.

Clearly Bamford's head was turned. "There is a brand-new generation of databases being built and deployed to address today’s data challenges. I’ve witnessed the explosive adoption of MongoDB over the past few years and I’m excited to be part of the team that is revolutionizing how organizations build, manage and run applications,"said Bamford in the press release announcing his move.

He's not alone. MongoDB has raised over $230 million from a wide variety of investors, including Intel, EMC, Red Hat, and is thought to be marching toward an IPO.

Disclosure: Dwight Merriman and Kevin Ryan, the founders of MongoDB, are investors in Business Insider.

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Oregon’s Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum has filed a lawsuit against Oracle for failing to build a functional Affordable Care Act website.

In the 126-page complaint, Rosenblum wrote that “today’s lawsuit clearly explains how egregiously Oracle has disserved Oregonians and our state agencies,” according to FM News 101 KXL’s website.

The lawsuit is seeking more than $200 million in damages related to "false statement and false claims,"according to AP.

In response, Oracle has sent the following statement to Business Insider:

The lawsuit filed today against Oracle by the Attorney General of Oregon is a desperate attempt to deflect blame from Cover Oregon and the Governor for their failures to manage a complex IT project. The complaint is a fictional account of the Oregon Healthcare Project.  Oracle is confident that the truth - and Oracle - will prevail in this action and the one filed by Oracle against Cover Oregon two weeks ago in federal court. 

Oracle was responsible for building the website for Oregon's Obamacare website, called Cover Oregon. But it failed to meet the Oct. 1 deadline last year, and Oregonians are applying for healthcare through paper forms.

Oregon eventually killed the website Oracle was building this past April, and moved to the federal exchange instead.

Oracle has blamed the state of Oregon for the dysfunctional website, and has charged the state more than $90 million over the last two years, although Cover Oregon is refusing to pay the invoices.

Just two weeks ago, Oracle filed a $20 million lawsuit against Oregon for breach of contract.

According to previous reports, the state of Oregon has paid $134 million to Oracle so far, in addition to $7 million for setting up the paper-based process. The site has cost more than $200 million so far for Oracle.

Here are some tweets about the lawsuit via Chelsea Kopta at local Portland TV network, KATU:

BREAKING: Oregon AG sues Oracle "for defrauding Oregonians in connection with Oracle's failure to provide ... functional website"#liveonk2

— Chelsea Kopta (@ChelseaKATU) August 22, 2014

Complaint: Oracle hid from Oregon the "true extent of Oracle's shoddy performance," continuing to promise what it couldn't deliver #liveonk2

— Chelsea Kopta (@ChelseaKATU) August 22, 2014

Complaint: Oracle fraudulently induced OR & @CoverOregon to enter into contracts for millions but "failed to perform as promised"#liveonk2

— Chelsea Kopta (@ChelseaKATU) August 22, 2014

SEE ALSO: Oracle Wants Everyone To Stop Blaming It For Oregon's 'Disaster Zone' Obamacare Website

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Oracle has lost an appeal to get SAP to fork over $1.3 billion.

Oracle was trying to make its arch rival pay a huge fine after a now-defunct SAP subsidiary called TomorrowNow was found liable for illegally downloading software owned by Oracle subsidiary PeopleSoft. 

Oracle bought PeopleSoft in 2004 via one of the longest, ugliest hostile takeover battles in tech history. SAP's purchase of TomorrowNow was widely seen as an effort to nab unhappy PeopleSoft customers away from Oracle.

Oracle sued SAP for copyright infringement in 2007 and won its case three years later.

During the suit, SAP admitted that TomorrowNow — which provided technical support to PeopleSoft customers — had downloaded PeopleSoft software. The jury awarded Oracle a hefty $1.3 billion.

But the judge threw out the award for being too big. The two companies negotiated for SAP to pay Oracle $272 million plus attorney's fees. That deal also allowed Oracle to file an appeal.

On Friday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled against reinstating the fine, although it did grant Oracle a bit more money, giving the company a choice between $356.7 million or a new trial.

This lawsuit with SAP has allowed Oracle CEO Larry Ellison to engage in some hefty trash-talk, particularly about its then-CEO Leo Apotheker. (Not that Ellison needs a big excuse to do that. The two companies have been slamming each other for years).

In 2012, during an entertaining interview at the D10 conference, he called Apotheker a "thief" and a "criminal" and saying:

SAP pleaded guilty to criminal theft of our software. Let me be clear. I'm not accusing SAP of anything. What did SAP do? Did you engage in criminal behavior and steal lots of Oracle software? Yes. That's SAP. Who was CEO when you were doing all this criminal stuff? Leo.

A SAP spokesperson told us, "We consider it very favorable, and think it shows the strength of our position."

Here's a statement from Oracle:

The appellate court ruling effectively permits Oracle to recover close to half a billion dollars in damages and attorneys’ fees from SAP's brazen conduct and cover-up that led to its admission of infringement liability and criminal charges and fines asserted by the U.S. Department of Justice. "We are thrilled about this landmark recovery and extremely gratified that our efforts to protect innovation and our shareholder's interests are duly rewarded," said Dorian Daley, Oracle's General Counsel. "This sends a strong message to those who would prefer to cheat than compete fairly and legally."

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Oracle has completed the acquisition of big hospitality tech company Micros Systems, a deal valued at $5.3 billion when it was announced in June.

Micros actually cost Oracle $4.6 billion net of Micros’ cash. Even so, this is Oracle's biggest acquisition since it bought Sun Microsystems in 2010 for $7.4 billion (which really cost Oracle $5.6 billion net of Sun’s cash.)

And in July, Oracle authorized up to $10 billion in bonds to help pay for Micros — and perhaps, other acquisitions.

Micros means two things to Oracle. Helping Oracle find a new source to boost revenue, which has grown roughly 3% over its last two fiscal years (from $37.1 billion in 2012, to $38.3 billion in 2014). Micros expects to end the year at over $1.36 billion in revenue and it grew revenues in 2014, so far, about 7%.

Oracle also wants Micros to help it fend off competitors like SAP and Salesforce.com who want to lure hospitality companies away from Oracle and onto their clouds instead.

Oracle has a master plan: it wants to own various industries that are going through radical technology changes. Retail, for instance, is an industry that is playing with everything from tablets on the sales floor, to RFID chips to tag merchandise, to iBeacons and near-field communications to offer in-store services.

Micros is in the hospitality industry (restaurants, hotels, resorts), that are also starting to do imaginative things with tech, from customer loyalty apps, to cloud-based restaurant management.

That's why Oracle added Micros and its 6,000 employees Mike Webster's plate.

Webster is the exec running Oracle's retail division. He now becomes the Senior Vice President and GM of the new combined business unit: Oracle Retail and Hospitality.

Oracle doesn't break out the revenues of the retail unit, but in 2012, a year after Webster joined Oracle, retail was Oracle's third-largest vertical business unit, reported Retail Systems Research.

Webster has been with Oracle since 2011, coming from NCR. This is a huge vote of confidence for him.

As to Oracle's bigger plan. It thinks there are four buckets of opportunity that can be applied to several big industries: Mobile/social, big data, cloud and Internet of Things. 

Oracle wants to bring these technologies to industries like health care, telecom/communications, utilities and so on.

SEE ALSO: The Most Simple Explanation Of Cloud Computing Ever, From Google

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Oracle announced Sunday evening that it acquired Front Porch Digital, a company that provides content storage management solution to some of the largest media companies in the world. Oracle declined to disclose the exact terms of the deal.

Front Porch Digital makes it easier for big media companies to manage, archive, and monetize its large-scale media files. For example, its technology simplifies the process of storing and archiving content from old legacy video tapes, while making it easy to communicate with all the different vendors involved in the content creation process. Everything works in a high-secure environment, and its software is provided in both the cloud and on-premise.

Front Porch has over 550 customers worldwide, including some of the world’s leading content providers, such as the BBC, ABC, ESPN, and Discovery Communications. It manages over 750 petabytes of digital content, which would play out to roughly 1,250 years of content, if played continuously, according to its CEO Mike Knaisch.

“The combination of Oracle with Front Porch Digital is expected to create the most comprehensive enterprise-grade cloud and on-premise content storage management solution to help organizations efficiently manage the growing complexities associated with the migration, integration, storage, and delivery of rich media content,” Oracle said in a statement.

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Oracle founder Larry Ellison is stepping down as CEO.

He will be replaced by two Oracle executives: Safra Catz and Mark Hurd, who will be co-CEOs. Ellison will be the executive chairman of Oracle's board, as well as the company's chief technology officer.

Oracle's shares are off by 3% on the news, though that may be due to weaker than expected earnings.

Here's what we know about the new co-CEOs of Oracle, which creates enterprise software and databases. Catz has been at Oracle for 15 years, serving as an executive in a variety of roles. She has been a president since 2004. From 2005 to 2008, she was CFO.

Ellison would eat up executives. Many presidents have come and gone while Catz has been at the company. The fact that Catz has lasted this long is impressive and shows she's earned her spot as CEO.

Hurd has been at Oracle since 2010 and was previously CEO of HP. He was ousted in a strange scandal that involved fudging expense accounts while flirting with a b-movie actress named Jodie Fisher.

Months after Hurd was out of HP, Adam Lashinsky at Fortune published a deep account of what "really" happened to get Hurd fired.

According to Lashinsky, Hurd was tossed because he did not want to disclose publicly that Fisher, and her attorney Gloria Allred, were accusing him of sexual harassment. The board wanted Hurd to disclose the charge, because they knew it would eventually get out.

As Hurd fought over disclosure, the board gradually lost faith in Hurd and assumed he was a liar. Hurd says there was no relationship with Fisher, but as more details emerged it became clear something was happening between the two — be it a friendship or more. Once the board stopped trusting him, they decided to toss him.

The board was fully supportive of Hurd until the harassment charge came to light.

Whatever the reasons for his ouster, when he left, HP went into a tailspin. The stock tanked, and it's still not back to where it was. While at HP, he cut headcount and killed the company's R&D budget. He was not well-liked by the rank and file.

"Hurd was fawned over by Wall St. but he made the numbers at the expense of the future of HP with R&D cuts, selling off HP's real estate and treating employees like dirt. Good riddance for him," one employee told us at the time.

Ellison founded Oracle in the late '70s, and the company's software has become a key backbone for the internet and is widely used by the government and banking sectors.

Ellison came up with the idea for Oracle after reading a paper about relational databases from IBM research. A relational database simply makes it easier to organize information. Instead of a static collection of data, you can sort information more easily.

Through aggressive salesmanship Ellison turned Oracle into one the most valuable companies in the world. Its market cap is ~$183 billion. It's expected to do $40.2 billion in sales this year.

Oracle turned Ellison into the 7th richest man in the world, with a net worth of ~$46 billion.

Unlike his more austere counterparts in the technology industry, Ellison was ostentatious, brash, and bold. He owns his own Hawaiian island, and many homes, yachts, and cars. His motto for life comes from Genghis Khan: “It’s not sufficient I succeed. Everyone else must fail.”

Here's the press release:

Safra Catz and Mark Hurd Appointed CEO

REDWOOD SHORES, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 09/18/14 -- The Oracle (NYSE: ORCL) Board of Directors today announced that it has electedLarry Ellison to the position of Executive Chairman of Oracle's Board and appointed him the company's Chief Technology Officer. Jeff Henley, who has served as Oracle's Chairman for the last 10 years, was appointed Oracle's Vice Chairman of the Board.

The Oracle Board also promoted both Safra Catz and Mark Hurd to the position of CEO, Oracle Corporation. All manufacturing, finance, and legal functions will continue to report to Oracle CEO, Safra Catz. All sales, service and vertical industry global business units will continue to report to Oracle CEO, Mark Hurd. All software and hardware engineering functions will continue to report to Oracle Chairman and CTO,Larry Ellison.

"Safra and Mark will now report to the Oracle Board rather than to me," said Larry Ellison. "All the other reporting relationships will remain unchanged. The three of us have been working well together for the last several years, and we plan to continue working together for the foreseeable future. Keeping this management team in place has always been a top priority of mine."

"Larry has made it very clear that he wants to keep working full time and focus his energy on product engineering, technology development and strategy," said the Oracle Board's Presiding Director, Dr. Michael Boskin. "Safra and Mark are exceptional executives who have repeatedly demonstrated their ability to lead, manage and grow the company. The Directors are thrilled that the best senior executive team in the industry will continue to move the company forward into a bright future."

SEE ALSO: The Incredible Life Of Larry Ellison

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Oracle just report its first-quarter fiscal 2015 earnings its another miss: $0.62 EPS versus expectations of $0.64.

Revenue of $8.06 billion versus expectations of $8.77 billion.

And it just shocked to the world by reporting that co-founder Larry Ellison is stepping down as CEO.

He was the longest sitting CEO in Silicon Valley and gave no indications that he had planned to retire anytime soon.

Oracle will hand the role over to a pair of executives: Safra Catz, formerly a president and CFO will be co-CEO. Mark Hurd, also a president, is now the co-CEO. Ellison will be on the board as executive chairman and he's taking on the title of CTO.

Analysts were expecting a modest increase in both revenue and profit. Their expectations of $8.77 billion in revenue and $.64 earnings per share profit compares to $8.38 billion in revenue and $.59 EPS for the year ago quarter.

In its last fiscal year, Oracle steadily grew revenues and profits, but mostly disappointed Wall Street by not growing as them as much as Street wanted. The last time it reported earnings was for its fourth quarter, 2014, usually its best quarter as salespeople push to close deals to make their annual quotas. But for the second year in a row, it missed expectations. A fourth quarter miss would have unheard of just a few years ago.

However, Oracle says that, like it's competitors, it is overhauling itself to sell more of its software as a cloud service, on a subscription basis. When its customers buy software through the cloud, instead of license it and install it on their own computers, they pay less up front and more over time. Oracle told analysts that this will affect its revenue in the short term.

Therefore, Wall Street is looking for a progress report on Oracle's cloud sales. It's also looking for solid sales of Oracle's bread-and-butter product, the database, as well as good news from Oracle's hardware business, which, after a long, harsh decline, recently started growing again.

Here's the press release:

REDWOOD SHORES, Calif., September 18, 2014 -- Oracle Corporation (NYSE: ORCL) today announced that fiscal 2015 Q1 total revenues were up 3% to $8.6 billion. Total Software plus Cloud revenue was up 6% to $6.6 billion. Software-as-a-service (SaaS) and Platform-as-a-service (PaaS) cloud revenue was up 32% to $337 million. Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) cloud revenue was up 26% to $138 million. Hardware systems revenue was down 8% to $1.2 billion. GAAP operating income was up 3% to $3.0 billion, and the GAAP operating margin was 34%. Non-GAAP operating income was up 2% to $3.8 billion, and the non-GAAP operating margin was 44%. GAAP net income was unchanged at $2.2 billion while non-GAAP net income was up 2% at $2.8 billion. GAAP earnings per share were $0.48, up 2% compared to last year while non-GAAP earnings per share were $0.62, up 4%. GAAP operating cash flow on a trailing twelve-month basis was $15.4 billion.

“We are increasing our cloud services growth rate while simultaneously delivering record levels of cash flow,” said Oracle CEO, Safra Catz. “In Q1, our overall cloud services business grew more than 30% to $475 million in revenue. At the same time, we delivered an all-time record operating cash flow up 7% to $6.7 billion. We are laser focused on two goals: growing our cloud business and growing our cash flow. We’re off to a good start in FY15.”

“Our internally developed Fusion cloud applications business grew at a rate of nearly 200% in the quarter,” said Oracle CEO, Mark Hurd. “As our hyper-growth Fusion applications become a larger and larger portion of our total SaaS sales, that will drive up our overall cloud services growth rate. Our cloud business is already three times the size of Workday, but we won’t be satisfied until we’re number one in the cloud.”

“Next week at Oracle Open World, we will be rolling out our database cloud service,” said Oracle Executive Chairman and Chief Technology Officer, Larry Ellison. “Database is our largest software business, and database will be our largest cloud service. With our new multitenant Database as a Service offering, our customers and ISV’s can move any of their existing Oracle databases and applications to the Oracle Cloud with the push of a button.”

The Board of Directors also declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.12 per share of outstanding common stock. This dividend will be paid to stockholders of record as of the close of business on October 8, 2014, with a payment date of October 29, 2014.

Oracle also announced that its Board of Directors authorized the repurchase of up to an additional $13.0 billion of common stock under its existing share repurchase program in future quarters.

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Shares of Oracle were down as much as 3% in after-hours trade on Thursday after the company announced the CEO Larry Ellison would be stepping down. 

Ellison will be taking a role as executive chairman and CTO.

Oracle also announced that both Safra Catz and Mark Hurd would serve as CEO of the company. 

The company also reported earnings and revenue that missed expectations.

Oracle reported earnings per share of $0.62 against expectations for $0.64, according to data from Thomson Reuters. Revenue in the quarter also came in light at $8.6 billion against expectations for $8.78 billion. 

Here's the full release from Oracle regarding its executive moves. 

REDWOOD SHORES, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 09/18/14 -- The Oracle (NYSE: ORCL) Board of Directors today announced that it has elected Larry Ellison to the position of Executive Chairman of Oracle's Board and appointed him the company's Chief Technology Officer. Jeff Henley, who has served as Oracle's Chairman for the last 10 years, was appointed Oracle's Vice Chairman of the Board.

The Oracle Board also promoted both Safra Catz and Mark Hurd to the position of CEO, Oracle Corporation. All manufacturing, finance, and legal functions will continue to report to Oracle CEO, Safra Catz. All sales, service and vertical industry global business units will continue to report to Oracle CEO, Mark Hurd. All software and hardware engineering functions will continue to report to Oracle Chairman and CTO, Larry Ellison.

"Safra and Mark will now report to the Oracle Board rather than to me," said Larry Ellison. "All the other reporting relationships will remain unchanged. The three of us have been working well together for the last several years, and we plan to continue working together for the foreseeable future. Keeping this management team in place has always been a top priority of mine."

"Larry has made it very clear that he wants to keep working full time and focus his energy on product engineering, technology development and strategy," said the Oracle Board's Presiding Director, Dr. Michael Boskin. "Safra and Mark are exceptional executives who have repeatedly demonstrated their ability to lead, manage and grow the company. The Directors are thrilled that the best senior executive team in the industry will continue to move the company forward into a bright future."

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Oracle just announced that founder and CEO Larry Ellison is stepping down.

We'll always remember him for his brutal verbal attacks on competitors, like this one on Microsoft and Bill Gates:

SEE ALSO: The Incredible Life Of Oracle Billionaire Larry Ellison

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It's the end of an era in the computer industry. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, the longest-running founder CEO the tech industry has ever seen, is stepping down from the CEO role. He's been CEO at Oracle since 1977. He will now become executive chairman and CTO.

He is turning the reins over to his his right-hand man and woman. Mark Hurd and Safra Catz will become co-CEOs.

Ellison's life story sounds like a made-for-TV movie saga. Raised by working-class Russian-
Jewish immigrant relatives on Chicago’s South Side, he was always bright but never a great student, dropped out of college not just once, but twice, before moving to Northern California at age 22, in 1966.

Once in California, he got work as a computer programmer. Then he read a paper published by IBM about a new kind of database programming language called SQL.

Ellison took that paper and turned SQL into the Oracle database, rewriting it so it could run on any computer. And he founded Oracle with his former boss, Robert Miner, along with Ed Oates and Bruce Scott.

It wasn't an instant success, reports Forbes, but after a few years, SQL took off.

The Oracle database became the most popular database ever sold and it propelled Ellison to become the best-paid CEO in the world and the fifth richest man in the world, with a net worth of $51 billion.

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Larry Ellison is without a doubt one of the people who has influenced the tech industry the most. 

Today's news that he is stepping down as CEO comes a shock.

Ellison, who is co-founder and now CTO of Oracle, has influenced the tech industry, business world, and your daily lives in numerous ways, whether you realize it or not.

College degree not required

Larry Ellison certainly isn't the only billionaire college dropout to find success in Silicon Valley but he was one of the first: Before Bill Gates, before his best friend Steve Jobs, before Michael Dell.

Ellison dropped out of college not just once, but twice, before moving to Northern California at age 22, in 1966.

He stayed in school long enough to learn about computer design and, a few years later,  invented a database by reading a paper about it written by an IBM scientist.

Today that database is run by all of the world's biggest companies. Just about every time you use a credit card, book an airline ticket, or get a prescription drug, Oracle has helped you do it.

Never retire

In just a couple of months, Larry Ellison will turn 70. He was the longest-running founder CEO the tech industry has ever seen. He held the CEO role at Oracle since 1977.

Back then, a 70-year-old CEO would have been unheard of. Even today, IBM has a tradition where CEOs are asked to retire at age 60.

With Ellison as a role model, other CEOs have decided to staying on longer, too, including Cisco's John Chambers and EMC's Joe Tucci.

Ellison has never even publicly discussed retirement and even though he will no longer be CEO, he still isn't really retiring. He will stay on as both executive chairman of Oracle and as its CTO.

A competitive spirit is the greatest motivator

Ask Ellison why he still comes to work every day — what drives him after all he's achieved — and he'll tell you the same answer: he loves to compete.

"I'm addicted to winning. The more you win, the more you want to win," he says.

More recently he described his motivation like this:

"What drives me is this constant testing of limits. Constant learning. ... How can you move the world just a bit, make a difference, change lives ... and how much can I help [while] discovering my own limits?"

Here is a photo from 1978 of Oracle's co-founders celebrating their company's first anniversary.

This was even before the company was named Oracle. At that time it was still called Software Development Laboratories (SDL).

The co-founders couldn't know that their company would one day become a multi-billion empire, the world's largest database maker, one of the world's largest enterprise software AND hardware vendors.

Here they are (left to right) Ed Oates, Bruce Scott, Bob Miner and yes, that tall guy on the far right is Larry Ellison.

Ed Oates, the project manager

Ed Oates retired from the company in 1996. "I had told Larry, when the company gets to 10,000 people, I'm out of there. I couldn't quit fast enough. I quit when the company had 20,000 people," he told attendees of a San Jose State University lecture he in 2011.

He then bought a high-end home theater store, called the Audible Difference which had clients like Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison. He sold it in 1999.

He is currently a member of the board of advisors of big data analytics company Auguri Corp. and is on the Board of Directors of the San Francisco Zoological Society and a guitarist in the band CHOC'D, with an album on iTunes.

Here's how he describes the co-founders: "What we brought to the table: Larry brought chutzpah. Technical wizardry, Bob Minor. Project management and knowledge of how computers worked at their core level, that was me. Notice we didn't have any business acumen. We weren't marketeers. We weren't sales guys. Other than a little bit of project management, we couldn't run a large organization to save our lives. We had to learn."

Bruce Scott, the first employee

Although Bruce Scott is widely considered an Oracle co-founder, technically he wasn't. He was its first hired employee -- or, if you count the founders, employee No. 4.  He was the co-architect of the first three versions of the Oracle database.

Scott was with Oracle its first five years and left in 1982 to help launch Gupta Technologies with another ex-Oracle employee, Umang Gupta. (It was later known as Centura Software). The company created the first client/server SQL database and flew high for a while but eventually filed for bankruptcy, and its tech was sold to investors.

Scott landed on his feet, co-founding another database company, PointBase which was acquired by DataMirror, a company that would later be acquired by IBM. Ironically, PointBase is still being used in Oracle's WebLogic software.

Scott took on a number of other engineering roles in the Valley since then and in 2012 co-founded a startup called Cedarcone, a tool to help salespeople.

Bob Miner, the technical genius

Bob Miner was the architect of Oracle's database and for most of his career at the company he led product design and development.

In 1992, he left that role and spun off a small unit within Oracle that worked on advanced technology.

If Ellison was considered the hard-driving "brains" of the company, Miner was considered its heart, a well-liked manager that counterbalanced Ellison. He wanted his employees to see their families, not work through the night.

He died in 1993 at age 52 from a rare form of lung cancer caused by exposure to asbestos.