The cloud is booming but no-one seems to have told Oracle

Revenues in the cloud computing world are growing fast with no end in sight just yet, but Oracle can’t seem to cash in on the bonanza.

This week brought joint-CEOs Safra Catz and Mark Hurd in front of analysts and investors to tell everyone nothing has really changed. Every cloud business seems to be hoovering up the fortunes brought with the digital era, demonstrating strong year-on-year growth, but Oracle only managed to bag a 2% increase, 1% for the cloud business units.

It doesn’t matter how you phrase it, what creative accounting processes you use, when you fix the currency exchange, Oracle is missing out on the cash grab.

Total Revenues were unchanged at $9.6 billion and up 2% in constant currency compared to the same three months of 2017, Cloud Services and License Support plus Cloud License and On-Premise License revenues were up 1% to $7.9 billion. Cloud Services and License Support revenues were $6.6 billion, while Cloud License and On-Premise License revenues were $1.2 billion. Cloud now accounts for nearly 70% of the total company revenues and most of it is recurring revenues.

Some might point to the evident growth. More money than last year is of course better, but you have to compare the fortunes of Oracle to those who are also trying to capture the cash.

First, let’s look at the cloud market on the whole. Microsoft commercial cloud services have an annual run rate of $21.2 billion, AWS stands at $20.4 billion, IBM $10.3 billion, Google cloud platform at $4 billion and Alibaba at $2.2 billion. Oracle’s annual run rate is larger than Google and Alibaba, those these two businesses are growing very quickly.

Using the Right Scale State of the Cloud report, enterprises running Google public cloud applications are now 19%, IBM’s applications are 15%, Microsoft at 58% and AWS at 68%. Alibaba is very low, though considering the scale potential it has in China, there is great opportunity for a catapult into the international markets. Oracle’s applications are only running in 10% of enterprise organizations who responded to the research.

Looking at the market share gains for last quarter, AWS is unsurprisingly sitting at the top of the pile collecting 34% over the last three months, Microsoft was in second with around 15%, while Google, IBM and Alibaba exceeded the rest of the market as well. Oracle sits in the group of ten providers which collectively accounted for 15% of cloud spending in the last quarter. These numbers shouldn’t be viewed as the most attractive.

Oracle is not a company which is going to disappear from the technology landscape, it is too important a service provider to numerous businesses around the world. However, a once dominant and influential brand is losing its position. Oracle didn’t react quick enough to the cloud euphoria and it’s looking like its being punished for it now.