Software earnings look good

In 2012, nevertheless, growth will slow in all categories to an overall 5.5 percent as weak economic growth in the U.S. and Europe makes business and governments in these regions more cautious in their tech buying.

The year-previously period

New software sales increased 17 percent over the year-previously period. The one sore spot was hardware: Sales for the hardware business, which Oracle acquired from Sun Microsystems last year, dropped 5 percent to $1 billion.

Other enterprise software vendors as well issued upbeat results. Tibco, for instance, reported net income that rose year over year to $23.5 million from $17.4 million. Excluding one-time items, Tibco generated $0.23 revenues per share, beating the $0.21 EPS estimate by analysts polled by Thomson Reuters. Revenue rose 24 percent to $229 million, $9 million higher than expectations.

"Markets will rise. Markets will fall. However some changes are unstoppable," said Tibco CEO Vivek Y. Ranadivé on the company revenues conference call, referring to growing requirements for businesses to use realtime software platforms. "If you're as a matter of fact selling something that people want today, you are in pretty good shape."

-- Red Hat, reporting Thursday, said revenue was up 28 percent year over year to $281.3 million, during net income soared to $40 million from $23.7 million.