So what happened? A few things, as Oracle execs tried to explain on a conference call.

• The currency effect: As President and CFO Safra Catz explained, what had been a 1 percent tailwind for currency effects turned into a 2 percent headwind. With all the violent swings in the value of currencies around the world as compared to the U.S. dollar, Oracle suffered a negative effect that pinched revenue.

• Deals didn’t close during the quarter: Catz said that in the final days and weeks of the quarter, some customers added an extra layer of executive approval to close deals to buy Oracle stuff. That meant that some deals Oracle had expected to close before the quarter’s end moved into the next quarter. Catz said that Oracle has taken steps to better manage deal flow to take this into account. It is consistent, however, with recent statements from other enterprise IT vendors, like IBM and NetApp.
• Transitions: Oracle’s SPARC server business just switched to a new chip called the T4, which was unveiled late in the quarter. The machines require a total upgrade, and that means a lot of testing with existing applications, which can slow down deals for the new machines, while at the same time sapping demand for the prior generation of products. That had a lot to do with hardware sales dropping by 14 percent year over year to $953 million. As Catz put it: “We saw good early demand for the new SPARC SuperCluster, but only released the product for general availability at the very end of the quarter, allowing us to ship only a couple.”

Catz also predicted that hardware sales will decline as much as 14 percent this quarter, although CEO Larry Ellison was bullish on its growth prospects later this year. New software license revenue, a key metric gauging software sales, is expected to grow in a range of 2 percent to 12 percent. Total sales are expected to grow in the range of 3 percent to 7 percent, and per-share earnings are expected to come in between 56 and 59 cents, which is in line with the consensus of analysts.

There were a few things that went right. Ellison did what he usually does on a conference call, and crowed about examples where Oracle is beating a competitor. This time, the targets were IBM, Cisco Systems and SAP, but not his usual punching bag, Hewlett-Packard. Oracle won several competitive deals from Big Blue and Cisco, as well, with customers as varied as Australia’s University of Melbourne, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Hyundai Kia Motor Company.

Ellison also hinted that Apple is a big Oracle customer. He mentioned a “a very large American smartphone manufacturer” that had bought more than 30 Oracle Exadata systems as it built out its cloud. Unless I’m missing something, there’s really only one company that fits that description, and that’s Apple. Its use of Oracle gear within the mix at its North Carolina data centers has been speculated about before, but never confirmed by Apple directly. (Big surprise, that.)

Given the recent feuds between the management teams at the two companies, Oracle’s acquisitive history and HP’s sudden weakness, it doesn’t take much for a popular narrative of Oracle buying HP to emerge. It would be a dramatic denouement to the events of the last year that have found HP and Oracle at increasingly caustic loggerheads. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison would take some kind of victory lap and mount HP on the wall like a of trophy.

The idea gained some currency with an Aug. 21 story in the New York Post (which, like this Web site, is owned by News Corp.) arguing that HP’s $11.7 billion bid for the British software firm Autonomy, having caused shareholders to knock $12 billion and change off HP’s market cap, would therefore make HP more attractive to Oracle.

The meme gained further currency with a Bloomberg News story saying that HP’s board was “concerned” that its weakened condition had left it vulnerable to Oracle.

Let me put it like this: No. Just, no.

The first problem with the notion is this: What parts of HP would Oracle want to own? Answer: Practically none.

First, let’s look at the condition of Oracle: Its mainline software businesses are showing healthy returns, while its hardware business, built on the foundation of Sun Microsystems, the IT hardware concern it acquired last year for $7 billion, is ramping up to full speed. But here’s a fundamental truth: Software carries a higher profit margin than hardware, so when software companies buy hardware companies, they can’t avoid seeing their overall profitability erode.

Consider Oracle’s operating margin during its fiscal fourth quarter — its seasonally strongest quarter — during the last three years. In 2009, before the Sun deal was closed, it was 43.4 percent. In 2010, after the Sun deal was closed, it was 38.3 percent. In 2011 it was 41.6 percent. And during Oracle’s most recent conference call, CFO Safra Catz said Oracle hopes to get back to “pre-Sun” operating margins soon.

Now let’s look at HP and its operating margins: In its most recent quarter ended July, HP’s enterprise, storage and networking business turned in operating margins of 13 percent, which were down from 14 percent in the prior year’s period. The story was the same in practically every other HP business unit: Operating margins in services fell from 15.7 percent to 13 percent; in software they fell from 28 percent to 19.7 percent; imaging and printing margins fell to 14.6 percent from 16.9 percent. The only place they increased was the personal systems group — the PC unit that’s being considered for a spinoff — where they grew year on year from 4.7 percent to 5.9 percent.

Conclusion: Owning HP would do nothing good for Oracle’s profitability, especially at a moment when the stated goal is to nudge them up.

There’s more. As Mark L. Moerdler, an analyst at Bernstein Research, argued in a research note to clients on Sept. 26, software accounts for about 2 percent of revenue at HP. And what software it has is not the type that Oracle typically likes. When Oracle does acquisitions, it grabs companies that make applications that plug holes in its own product portfolio. The majority of HP’s software offerings — Autonomy nothwithstanding — deal with infrastructure management, not exactly a priority for Oracle. It is, however, a business where IBM and Computer Associates participate.

And there are two historically important business units at HP that would be outliers at Oracle: PCs and printers. Oracle has no interest in either one, and it’s hard to see that changing. Combined they make up more than half of HP’s annual revenue. In the hands of Oracle, they would probably end up being spun out, either together or separately, but why buy a whole company only to chop off more than half of it — a half that’s shrinking at that — at what would have to be unfavorable terms.

Let’s not forget the valuation estimate of HP’s $40 billion PC business: Analysts have expected that a hypothetical buyer might pay as little as $8 billion for it, or about one-fifth trailing revenue. Why go to all that trouble?

Further: Why would Oracle buy a company that’s roughly one-quarter exposed to the consumer market. Sure, HP has a retail distribution network that’s the envy of the PC industry. But Oracle would rather sell those retailers systems to help them manage their businesses, not the PCs they in turn resell at razor-thin margins.

If that’s not enough, then there’s one key bit about HP that Oracle would actively dislike. HP, by virtue of being the biggest distributor of Windows-based PCs and servers, is the world’s largest reseller of Microsoft Windows. If there’s anything more utterly antithetical to Oracle’s core values than helping put money in Microsoft’s pocket, I haven’t heard of it.

Finally, there’s the issue of cash. Even in its weakened state, HP is trading at a market cap of $45 billion and change. Assuming a premium for the whole thing, that pushes a hypothetical price tag to $60 billion. That’s too rich, even for Oracle, whose balance sheet as of Aug. 31 contained a combined $31.6 billion in cash and marketable securities. It would have to take on a tremendous amount of debt — amounting to 82 percent of fiscal 2011 sales — to get such a deal started, let alone closed.

HP’s directors and shareholders can rest easy. They have many worries about the Silicon Valley icon and the troubles in which it finds itself. But being acquired by Oracle isn’t one of them.

Today, Fortune magazine released its annual “50 Most Powerful Women in Business” and, as usual, it had its share of tech execs on the list.

And off it, too — first and foremost being ousted Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz, who was jacked completely from her 2010 No. 10 rank. She was No. 8 in 2009.

In her place: Newly designated Hewlett-Packard CEO and former eBay CEO Meg Whitman grabbed the No. 9 spot.

Also on the list: fast-rising IBM sales, marketing and strategy exec Ginni Rometty at No. 7; Xerox CEO Ursula Burns at No. 8; Oracle President and CFO Safra Catz at No. 11; Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg at No. 12; Google execs Susan Wojcicki and Marissa Mayer at No. 28 and No. 38, respectively; IBM North America GM Bridget Van Kralingen at No. 39; and Best Buy Americas President Shari Ballard.

Catz was the highest paid of the group, with $42.1 million in total 2010 compensation.

And also taken off this year: 2010 No. 14, HP’s Ann Livermore, who left her top job there, but still is on the tech giant’s board; 2010 No. 28 Cathie Lesjak, CFO of HP; 2010 No. 44 Lorrie Norrington, a former president at eBay; and Apple’s communications head Katie Cotton (she was robbed!), who was No. 50 in 2010.

The new list will be in the magazine on Monday, which is when a related conference will take place in Southern California. (I will also be in attendance there, along with other less powerful ladies.)

Whitman is scheduled to speak at the conference in the afternoon on Tuesday, October 4.

Rumors that Oracle is considering another acquisition appear with unsurprising regularity given the pace of its deal-making over the last several years. One such rumor I noticed late last year was around Autonomy. Others companies mentioned in Oracle-takeover rumors that haven’t materialized are Ultimate Software, Lawson and Blackboard. The reason?

Over the years, Oracle has often grown by acquisitions, but that works only when the valuations of target companies are attractive. Right now they’re too high, Ellison says. President and CFO Safra Catz put it much more simply at the end of the audio clip below: Valuations are, right now, “quite ridiculous.” Meanwhile, as today’s earnings results show, Oracle is growing just fine organically without making any big deals for now, he says.

Still, that didn’t stop Oracle from acquiring privately held Web software player Fatwire just yesterday.

You can hear Ellison and Catz discuss it in the audio highlight below. The clip opens with the final question from today’s earnings conference call, from Wells Fargo analyst Jason Maynard.

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison Says He’s Done Shopping For Deals, For Now by ahess247

The weakness in hardware sent shares down by more than 4 percent in after-hours trading. Oracle said that in the wake of its acquisition of Sun Microsystems a year ago, the company is focusing more on selling a lower volume of hardware at a higher profit margin. That process of transition is still underway as you can read in my liveblog coverage from the earnings conference call below.

2:12 pm: And the call is underway. President Safra Catz is making some opening remarks.

There’s the first reference to hardware. “We’re running the Sun business in a more profit-aware manner than before.” Hardware gross margins were 56 percent. Later this year I expect the growth in the Sun products to be “quite obvious.”

“We could be back at pre-Sun operating margins quite quickly as there remains a lot of leverage in our operating model.”

Catz: “We now have $29 billion in cash and marketable securities.”

Guidance: As you remember, we had a spectacular Q1 last year. Assuming exchange remains at current levels: New software is expected to show 10 to 20 percent growth, hardware is plus or minus 5 percent.

Total revenue expected to grown 9 to 12 percent non-GAAP.

EPS 45 to 48 non-GAAP.

2:17 pm: And here’s Larry. “We’re already nearly twice as big as IBM, and taking share away from them in databases.”

We did a number of cloud computing deals. We did a deal with Salesforce.com this year. We did a deal with the biggest and best names in mobile devices and cloud computing. (Could he be referring to Apple?)

The expansion of our Exadata business plus our Exalogic business, should turbocharge our hardware business.

And here’s Mark Hurd. We sold a lot of software. Software growth was broad based. It was the first time we’ve ever sold more than $1 billion in apps.

Our sequential growth in Exadata was more than 50 percent. Proctor & Gamble, J.P. Morgan Chase and Apple (yes, Ellison was talking about Apple earlier) have helped us cross the 1,000-system threshold. (Paraphrasing Hurd there.)

2:21 pm: Time for Q&A from the analysts.

First question from Morgan Stanley: The hardware business: How material was the headwind relative to the shift in the model? What gives you confidence that you can get it growing again? And a question about attach rates.

Hurd answers: He is explaining attach rates. We’ve moved to a model where we have the service lined up to the sales activity. Selling units that have no gross margin is easy to do. We are focused on selling hardware systems at a higher price, that are of a higher value to the customer and that stay installed longer.

Question from Merrill Lynch: A question about guidance. How you might have incorporated a questionable macroeconomic forecast. And a second question about attach rates.

Larry jumps in: The attach rate to Exalogic and Exadata is 100 percent. They are becoming a bigger part of our overall hardware business. That improves our profitability. Exadata is growing faster than our traditional Sun line. We sell more and more engineered systems and fewer undifferentiated systems. This allows us to increase our sales of Middleware because it runs better on Exalogic.

Ellison: We sell more database and middleware because of Exadata and Exalogic.

Catz on the economy: We’ve got guys around the world who roll in a forecast for us. But its very much the same. The truth is the economy is as it is, and we continue to grow. This was an organic growth quarter for us. We’ve got a lot of very Oracle-specific momentum going.

Hurd: We added 800 people to the sales organization this quarter. If that gives you an idea of our confidence of where the market is.

Question from Credit Suisse: Question about the sales force change that the analyst focused on in his pre-earnings note last month.

Hurd on the sales force: We put more territories in the field by getting more density of coverage. We believe we are under-distributed. When we get in front of more customers we sell more software.

Hurd: One salesperson had 20 customers. We think that person can sell just as much software calling on five customers.

Ellison: We’re going to add a couple of appliances. One is a large memory addition to Exadata for Big Data. As memory becomes cheaper and larger scale. We’ll be announcing in the fall at Oracle Openworld.

He’s now answering a question about Hadoop boxes. He says they don’t replace databases. The Big Data accelerator includes some of the open source components like Hadoop and some other Oracle pieces that can speed up the MapReduce process that Hadoop does. Oracle has always followed database technology trends…and kept up and quite often led on innovation.

Ellison: IBM still hasn’t come out with an appliance that runs their DB2 database very fast. Instead they ran out and did an acquisition. (Seems IBM is the going to be the victim of his verbal jabs this call, not Hewlett-Packard.)

Question from J.P. Morgan: Hardware margins were strong. The higher margin business was better than the low margin. But this is the second quarter in a row that hardware has decrased. Is it because the commodity business is shrinking faster?

Hurd: Its just the fundamentals of building a business. We are putting more coverage out in the market. Making sure we attach all the peripherals. We want to grow the top line, but we want to grow it right. Getting these high margin sales is key. You’re going to see material growth in Exadata and Exalogic. We’ll be focused on some competitors that have some key vulnerabilities.

Catz: We used to resell Hitachi, but the other big storage we sold was LSI, which during the quarter was sold to NetApp. Our selling of those storage products overall is down, but selling our own storage products is up.

Hurd: You see the same thing in the server business. The higher margin products have higher growth rates, and the x86 line is slower.

Catz: We see deals come in that aren’t profitable and so we walk away from them. We want to make money. We’re funny that way.

Question from UBS: About the forecast for new license revenue.

Catz: We always have some spillover. We look at what the guys are forecasting. The Exadata and Exlogic systems really help because you have to buy software. On the app side, we’ve been on a roll. I add my own little bit of conservatism. The summer means chasing the contracts while people are on vacation.

Question for Elllison: You thought there would be 50 to 100 customers for Oracle Fusion.

Ellison: We have a number of Fusion customers that are live, and it’s being rolled out completely. We’re the only application vendor that offers the same technology on our cloud, or you can put it on your private cloud. And if you want we’ll run it for you.

Ellison: We think we’ve been competing very well with SAP, very effectively. They have no answers regarding the cloud at all. They have nothing. (Okay, now SAP gets a little bit of Larry’s abuse.)

Question from Lazard Capital: A question about Exalogic. What’s driving the growth and are there any significant customer wins?

Hurd: With Exalogic you go to Java applications and want to speed them up versus when you’re running them on x86. It’s an extremely attractive value proposition.

Question from Wells Fargo: You have a lot of cash on the balance sheet. How are you thinking about acquisitions? Valuations aren’t exactly low. (Oracle has $29 billion.)

Ellison: We had 19 percent growth without acquisitions. We can grow through acquisitions when they are attractive and make sense. Right now they aren’t and so we aren’t doing them. Right now we’re focusing on organic growth, which means increasing the sales force and introducing new products. We think we have a lot to sell. We can grow by acquistions when the opportunity presents itself and when the economics make sense. Right now they don’t make sense.

Catz: Every once in awhile we find a jewel. Price does matter to us. We just want to make sure it’s a good business case when we do it. Prices have recently been quite ridiculous.

And now a follow-up question on Catz’s earlier comment on returning to pre-Sun operating margins.

Catz: We ingested a money-losing hardware company and we still have the highest operating margins in the software industry. There is no reason why this year couldn’t be really spectacular.

With the software business and the enormous installed base who renew with us every year, there’s still a lot of room left in our model.

And that’s a wrap!

The company just reported earnings for its fourth fiscal quarter. Sales were $10.78 billion, slightly ahead of the $10.75 billion that had been the consensus of Wall Street analysts, and up 13 percent. Per-share profits were 75 cents, up 36 percent, and beating the consensus of 71 cents.

Revenue from new software licenses was up 19 percent to $3.7 billion. Software license updates and product support revenue was up 15 percent to $4 billion. Hardware sales were down 6 percent to $1.2 billion.

The weakness in hardware sales appeared to cause a sell-off of Oracle shares in after-hours trading. As of 4:26 New York time, shares were trading at $30.49, down more than $2, or more than 6 percent.

CEO Larry Ellison described the database software business as having its “fastest growth in a decade,” and that Oracle has been adding features to the software to exploit opportunities in cloud computing and big data.

Sales of Exadata machines — the ones that combine computers from the old Sun business with Oracle software — “made a strong contribution” in the quarter, president Mark Hurd said in a statement. He said that Oracle has sold 1,000 of the machines worldwide, and that the goal is to triple that number in the next fiscal year.

In a statement, CFO Safra Catz said that software license revenue grew 19 percent “with almost no help from acquisitions.” That helped push operating margins to 48 percent on a non-GAAP basis.

For the fiscal year, Oracle finished the year with $35.6 billion in sales and a per-share profit of $2.22 non-GAAP.

Oracle’s statement yesterday called the appointment of Safra Catz as president and CFO “permanent.” While that’s clearly meant to convey that this is no interim appointment, which was the case in her first turn as CFO during a three-year period that ended in 2008, does it also imply that Catz has reached her peak on the management ladder?

At least one analyst has concluded that it does. Pat Walravens, an analyst at JMP Securities tells Bloomberg that Catz’s appointment sets the pieces in place for President Mark Hurd, the 54-year old former Hewlett-Packard CEO, to take the reins from CEO Larry Ellison at some point in the future. Hurd, he says, gains more day-to-day control over the company, giving him a logical springboard to the corner office.

But is it really so clear? Before Hurd arrived on the scene, it was Catz who had always been described as Ellison’s heir apparent. She won her stripes primarily overseeing Oracle’s $10.6 billion takeover of Peoplesoft in 2005. At an Oracle event in 2005, Ellison said “If I dropped dead tomorrow, Safra Catz would be CEO of Oracle.” That implies that a formal succession plan saying exactly that was once–and may still be–in place. And by getting a title that begins with C, something Hurd doesn’t have, there’s a further implication of seniority that effectively makes Catz appear to be the second most powerful person at Oracle after Ellison.

Obviously there will be more tea-leaf reading to come from all this. And there will be more signals from Oracle that will be interpreted and re-interpreted again. Ellison is 66 years old and has been running Oracle since the days of the Carter Administration. He’s showing no signs of letting go of the pilot wheel just yet. (You just know he’s going to live to be 180.) Hurd is 54 and Catz is 49. Ellison likes them both. Time will eventually tell who gets the nod.

“Safra already has the long-standing confidence of our employees, our board and our shareholders,” said Oracle CEO Larry Ellison in a company statement. “There is no more logical choice for CFO.” She joined Oracle in April of 1999, started serving as director in 2001 and became a president in early 2004 (and was joined in that position last year by former HP CEO Mark Hurd). She’s also a director at HSBC Group.

Oracle offered no elaboration on Epstein’s departure.

Catz’s most recent public duties included running Oracle’s quarterly earnings conference call last month, while Ellison served on jury duty.

Catz herself appeared in court not once but twice during Oracle’s intellectual property trial against SAP, and annoyed SAP lawyers with the “colorful analogies” she cooked up that were intended to make the point that Oracle deserved the $1.3 billion a jury had awarded it, not the $40 million SAP said it owed Oracle.

The company also raised its quarterly dividend by a penny per share, or 20 percent, making this the third year in a row it has boosted its dividend. It said it doesn’t expect significant impact on its operations in Japan following the earthquake. There had been some concerns.

Oracle said it expects profit–excluding one-time expenses–will be in the 69- to 73-cent range this quarter, beating the 66-cent average estimate of analysts. Revenue is expected to grow year-on-year in the range of 9 to 13 percent, which works out to a range of between $10.4 billion and $10.7 billion.

The results were led by sales of new software licenses, a key measure of new business as opposed to sales to existing computers, which rose 29 percent to $2.2 billion. This handily beat the company’s guidance for growth in new licenses of 10 to 20 percent.

Software license updates rose 13 percent to $3.7 billion. Hardware sales were $1 billion, but since Oracle closed on its Sun acquisition during this quarter a year ago, a year-on-year comparison doesn’t apply.

The strong earnings report comes a day after Oracle launched a quarrel with hardware rival Hewlett-Packard and chipmaker Intel by saying it would no longer develop software that runs on systems using Intel’s Itanium Processor because it expects Intel is quietly planning to kill the chip. Intel denied the claim, saying two new versions of Itanium are in the pipeline, while HP, which sells most of the systems containing the chip, said it was “shocked.” Oracle stuck to its guns, saying it was only trying to help its customers plan accordingly.

Speaking of HP, with Oracle CEO Larry Ellison serving on jury duty, it fell to President Safra Catz to deliver this quarter’s obligatory dig at HP during a conference call with analysts.

With Oracle’s hardware business showing a healthy hardware margin–which is interesting in light of the fact that the results contain the hardware assets of Sun Microsystems–Catz reiterated a prior promise to deliver a $1.5 billion profit on the Sun business by the end of this fiscal year. That makes Sun a good purchase, she said, when compared to HP’s acquisition of 3Par, though time will tell if Oracle can deliver on the promised $2 billion profit in year two.

It’s probably not a fair comparison. Sun was trading at an extremely depressed valuation when Oracle stepped in. Only months before, Sun had been trading at the value of its cash holdings. 3Par, on the other hand, saw its valuation triple as the result of a punishing bidding war between HP and Dell. However Catz isn’t the first one to say HP paid too much. But as usual, any chance to tweak HP’s nose is fair game at Oracle, as you can hear in the audio clip below.

Safracatz1 by ahess247

But he sounded particularly determined when articulating his vision for Oracle’s plans in the high-end server business, which is based primarily on the hardware business Oracle got as part of the Sun Microsystems acquisition.

Naturally, Ellison’s plans are nothing less than total domination in the world of high-end servers. Below is an audio clip, about three minutes in length, in which he articulates his vision.

In fairness to HP, which as usual bears the brunt of Ellison’s trash-talking, it has dismissed the benchmark about which Ellison is so proud of beating HP as outdated. Time will tell if that ultimately matters.

The clip begins with Oracle President Safra Catz congratulating Ellison on winning so many sailing races before giving him the floor.

Larry Ellison speech by ahess247

Sales were $8.6 billion, helped mostly by new software license sales that grew 21 percent to $2 billion, while updates and product support revenue grew 12 percent to $3.7 billion. The consensus estimate was $8.34 billion. Sales grew 47 percent from the same period a year ago.

Non-GAAP per-share earnings were 51 cents, beating the 46-cent forecast estimate of analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial. Earnings after one-time items were 37 cents, up from 29 cents a year ago.

Gross margins on Sun-branded hardware increased to 53 percent.

Shares are up almost 4 percent in after-hours trading.

There’s a quote from CEO Larry Ellison, reminding us how fast his new products are, and digging once again at the competition:

“Sun’s new SPARC Supercluster computer shattered the world record for database transaction processing performance by running 3 times faster than IBM’s fastest computer, and a stunning 7.5 times faster than HP’s best ever database performance,” said Oracle CEO, Larry Ellison. “Our new generation of Exadata, Exalogic and SPARC Supercluster computers deliver much better performance and much lower cost than the fastest machines from IBM and HP.”

Here’s another quote, from Oracle co-President (and former HP CEO) Mark Hurd, about the Exadata product line:

“Since joining Oracle I’ve met with and visited many customers that have expressed a high level of enthusiasm around our strategy of engineering hardware and software that works together,” said Oracle President, Mark Hurd. “That enthusiasm translates into an Exadata pipeline that has now grown to nearly $2 billion. That number is a good leading indicator that customers are planning to increase their investment in Oracle technology.”

Yes I would say there’s enthusiasm. It was precisely because of the Exadata line that Macquarie Research upgraded Oracle today.

More from the conference call, which starts at 5 pm ET.

4:53 pm: Seven minutes to go before the Oracle earnings conference call starts. Right now it’s all mellow classical guitar.

Call is running a little late.

5:10 pm: And we’re underway with the safe-harbor statement.

Ellison, Hurd and president Safra Catz are on the call.

Americas grew 32 percent in U.S. dollars.

5:15 pm: Balance sheet: $24.8 billion in cash and short-term investments.

Generated $3.7 billion in free cash flow.

5:15 pm: Safra Catz is now speaking. We exceeded the high point of license guidance. Even excluding a payment for legal fees, we beat guidance by 4 cents.

5:16 pm: All geographies reported double-digit growth.

5:16 pm: “We continue to take share from SAP.”

5:17 pm: With Sun, included operating margins were 44 percent, which is better than SAP. [Another dig.]

5:18 pm: Hardware guidance: $1.1 to $1.2 billion in revenues.

Non-GAAP EPS expected to be 48 to 50 cents, and 34 to 36 cents on a GAAP basis.

Here’s Larry:

5:19 pm: Our goal is to be No. 1 in high-end market for servers. Right now our numbers are behind HP and IBM.

5:20 pm: IBM’s and HP’s servers are slow, and software is slow and expensive and have no software value-add. [Another dig at the competitors.]

5:22 pm: Exadata pipeline continus to grow. We expect our new generation of Sun machines will enable us to win significant share, and position us in the No. 2 position behind IBM very soon. And then we’ll fight it out for No. 1.

5:23 pm: Now Mark Hurd is speaking.

5:23 pm: I want to focus on our opportunities to grow significantly.

5:24 pm: Deal volume was spread across companies of all sizes and strength in the public sector as well.

5:24 pm: All of our customers and competitors are reacting to us.

5:25 pm: 150,000 Middleware customers. We ended the quarter with a record hardware backlog.

5:26 pm: Now going to Q&A:

A question from UBS. Are you starting to see a halo impact on adoption of the Oracle suite?

Larry: Close rates are improving. You’ll see great improvement in Exadata sales from Q2 to Q3. Because it’s new, people were running a lot of benchmarks and trying it out first. We’ll sell a lot more Exadata in Q3 than in Q2.

As for the halo effect, when you buy these servers you buy them to run specific software. Engineer them at the same time and make sure they run well together. We have a huge advantage over IBM and HP. The notion of systems, hardware and software that run well together will dominate the high end of the business.

Q: You clearly have a lot of irons in the fire with Fusion apps coming up and Exadata. Focus on Exalogic. Can you share early feedback from customers and compare that to Exadata ramp.

Mark: Exadata experience benefits Exalogic. We’ve matured the use case, we think we know where the targets are. The Exadata experience is a big deal for us.

5:31 pm: A question about Fusion Middleware.

Larry: We’ve been in the middleware business for a long time. With release 11 everything has been rewritten. It’s a much better user experience, you can patch our entire suite with a single file. We think the fact that we have an integrated suite gives us a huge advantage over IBM.

5:33 pm: A question about Europe. It was better than expected. Apps business was really strong. Look at competitors. You’ve been gaining share against SAP. We are seeing a pickup in general environment.

Hurd: I’m not an economist, but we’re doing well in Europe. It was broad-based. It was not singular to a deal or country. It was broad-based to countries where we have been gaining share. It’s been one quarter after another, a pretty steady beat.

Larry: We had a wonderful set of industry specific applications, in telecommunications and banking and retail, and that’s unique vis-a-vis SAP. that has helped us a lot to establish us in a lot of industries. Also Fusion is right around the corner.

5:35 pm: Q: How frequently is an Exadata deployment resulting in the displacement of a competitor’s product?

Hurd: About 70 to 75 percent of the time. About 20 to 25 percent of the time it’s a consolidation.

We’ve sold Exadata now in 50 countries, and 30 to 35 percent of our customers have made a second purchase. You’re starting to see repeat purchases. We’ve learned a lot about this and so as we launch Exalogic we can accelerate our learnings.

5:36 pm: Q: Margin was also great. What can we expect going forward and what were one-time items?

Catz: In general, it’s the business. The only nonrepeatable thing is the $120 million legal settlement, which we will not repeat. Hardware margins and operating margins, this is something we’ve done for many years.

5:38 pm: Q: What is visibility for database licenses?

Larry: A couple quarters ago, someone noticed database licenses were growing nicely. We think Exadata is going to be a nice turbocharge to our database business. Across the board our database business is going to get strong with Exadata.

I just looked at after-hours trading in Oracle shares and they’re up more than 4.5 percent.

Hurd: “The secret to Exadata is bringing the smarts to the data, versus bringing the data to the smarts.”

5:42 pm: Q: What continues to drive the database business? Is it just core database, add-ons?

Larry: We think our technology is getting faster and more reliable at a faster rate than that of our competitors.

5:43 pm Larry: As far as applications, we think there are lots of reasons we continue to gain share every quarter over the last few years over SAP.

It’s the industry-specific applications. We have telecom companies that are running only Oracle software. We have some banks that are making the same kind of commitments up and down the stack. SAP just doesn’t have that.

5:44 pm: Larry: We’ve got this extremely modern Java-based suite called Fusion that is going to strengthen our competitive stance against Salesforce.com and against Workday.

5:46 pm: That seems to be it. The call is concluded.

“[Their offer] doesn’t value our intellectual property at all,” she said, adding that TomorrowNow’s infringement encompassed more than just support documentation. “Yes, there were documents and help guides and things like that, but there was also the software itself–probably millions of lines of code, which is what the products really are….And we spend billions a year on R&D. This is a business where intellectual property is worth billions.”

Greg Lanier, a Jones Day attorney representing SAP, pressed her on that point insisting that Oracle isn’t owed such a large damages award because the value that the company lost to TomorrowKnow’s infringement is that “Oracle doesn’t get the chance to sell that software to someone else.”

But Catz wasn’t having any of it.

“You know, if Warner Brothers had a little subsidiary that copied Disney’s entire library and started selling it for $2 a copy, and they got caught and then offered to give Disney back half of what they made, is Disney’s library only worth $50?” she asked. “I mean, really. It’s valuable. The fact that it was copied doesn’t change that it’s valuable.”

Lanier quickly dismissed Catz’s point as a “colorful analogy,” reminding her that there are only 358 lost customers at issue in this case. Hard to imagine that such a “colorful analogy” in an otherwise tedious enterprise software case didn’t resonate with the jury, though.

Closing arguments in the case begin on Monday, with jury deliberations to follow.

PREVIOUSLY:

• Plattner and White No-Shows at Oracle-SAP Trial
• Damages Expert to SAP: You Owe Me $14 Million and Oracle Four Times That
• Oracle, SAP and the Apotheker Sideshow
• Better Late: SAP Co-CEO Apologizes for Oracle IP Theft
• SAP Co-CEO Expected to Testify in Oracle Trial Today
• HP to Oracle: Leave Léo Alone
• Oracle Still Hoping to Snag HP’s Apotheker for SAP Trial
• HP CEO to Oracle: Here’s Looking at You, Kid–Suntory Time!
• Ellison to Self: Damn, Damn. I Knew I Should Have Said $4.5 Billion
• SAP Attorney: Board Knew TomorrowNow Was Infringing at Time of Acquisition
• Oracle Co-President on SAP’s Damages Offer: “It’s Crazy”
• Oracle Enlists Process Servers, Not PIs, to Find HP CEO
• Oracle-SAP Trial: Ellison Swaps Katana for Poison Darts
• Objection: Mr. Ellison Is Referring to the Defendant as “Choleric of Temper” Again
• Oracle Lands Early Shots in SAP Trial
• Your Honor, We Object to Mr. Ellison’s Repeated Use of the Term “Slimy Weasels”
• Oracle to HP CEO: Chicken!
• Oracle Vs. SAP: We Got a Right to Pick a Little Fight–Bonanza!
• SAP’s Tab in Oracle Case: $120 Million and Counting
• Gag Order Denied in Oracle, SAP Trial
• Ellison Taunts HP CEO a Second Time
• SAP to Ellison: Save the Drama for Your Mama
• Ellison to HP CEO: “Warrior, Come Out to Plaaeeay!
• SAP: Please Gag Oracle
• HP Scandal Sucks in New York Times Columnist Over Conflict of Interest
• Welch to HP Board: You Don’t Know Jack!
• Insiders Criticize Ellison For HP CEO Slam
• Was Apotheker HP’s First Choice of CEO?
• HP Names Ex-SAP Chief Apotheker as CEO

Indeed, speaking to reporters in the courtroom hallway this morning, Boies said that the evidence Oracle presented during the trial proved that Apotheker had knowledge of the copyright infringement scheme at issue in the case. “The testimony and evidence prove that Mr. Apotheker oversaw the copyright infringement scheme,” Boies said. “We did not show the 2 year old video deposition because it was taken before SAP stipulated to liability.”

Of course if Apotheker was as pivotal a figure as Boies maintains, one would think that there would at least be some content in his video deposition worth showing the jury. Certainly, that’s the view of SAP, which continues to maintain that Oracle’s repeated shots at Apotheker are more about the PR trial being conducted outside the courtroom than anything else.

“Today’s proceedings focused on the damages, and we remain confident that we have demonstrated a clear case for fair compensation to Oracle for the limited operations of TomorrowNow,” an SAP spokesperson said in a statement. “We trust now in the jury to bring this matter to an appropriate conclusion.”

HP has not yet commented on Boies’s remarks. The company reports earnings next week, and Oracle would obviously not be unhappy if any of this legal unpleasantness happened to lodge in investors’ minds.

UPDATE: Here’s HP’s official comment: “Oracle’s current stance is clear proof that they have been trying to harass Léo and interfere with his work at HP. As HP has said repeatedly, Oracle had ample opportunity to question Léo in the two years after he gave a full-day deposition. Léo was never asked to give an additional deposition. As HP and SAP have noted, Oracle chose not to include Leo as a live trial witness until after he was named CEO of HP. Léo had a limited role in the matter.”

PREVIOUSLY:

• Plattner and White No-Shows at Oracle-SAP Trial
• Damages Expert to SAP: You Owe Me $14 Million and Oracle Four Times That
• Oracle, SAP and the Apotheker Sideshow
• Better Late: SAP Co-CEO Apologizes for Oracle IP Theft
• SAP Co-CEO Expected to Testify in Oracle Trial Today
• HP to Oracle: Leave Léo Alone
• Oracle Still Hoping to Snag HP’s Apotheker for SAP Trial
• HP CEO to Oracle: Here’s Looking at You, Kid–Suntory Time!
• Ellison to Self: Damn, Damn. I Knew I Should Have Said $4.5 Billion
• SAP Attorney: Board Knew TomorrowNow Was Infringing at Time of Acquisition
• Oracle Co-President on SAP’s Damages Offer: “It’s Crazy”
• Oracle Enlists Process Servers, Not PIs, to Find HP CEO
• Oracle-SAP Trial: Ellison Swaps Katana for Poison Darts
• Objection: Mr. Ellison Is Referring to the Defendant as “Choleric of Temper” Again
• Oracle Lands Early Shots in SAP Trial
• Your Honor, We Object to Mr. Ellison’s Repeated Use of the Term “Slimy Weasels”
• Oracle to HP CEO: Chicken!
• Oracle Vs. SAP: We Got a Right to Pick a Little Fight–Bonanza!
• SAP’s Tab in Oracle Case: $120 Million and Counting
• Gag Order Denied in Oracle, SAP Trial
• Ellison Taunts HP CEO a Second Time
• SAP to Ellison: Save the Drama for Your Mama
• Ellison to HP CEO: “Warrior, Come Out to Plaaeeay!
• SAP: Please Gag Oracle
• HP Scandal Sucks in New York Times Columnist Over Conflict of Interest
• Welch to HP Board: You Don’t Know Jack!
• Insiders Criticize Ellison For HP CEO Slam
• Was Apotheker HP’s First Choice of CEO?
• HP Names Ex-SAP Chief Apotheker as CEO

Then it’s on to closing arguments, now scheduled for Monday, and finally deliberation. Odd to think that the case has reached this point with so few SAP board members actually testifying live in court. Looking over the final witness list for the trial reveals a number of noteworthy no-shows (beyond Hewlett-Packard CEO Léo Apotheker): Former SAP CEO Henning Kagermann, COO and board member Gerhard Oswald, co-founder and board chairman Hasso Plattner, and, most interestingly, CFO Mark White, SAP’s designated corporate representative for the trial and the guy tapped by its board to clean up the TomorrowNow mess.

Why didn’t SAP put them on the stand? Perhaps it’s because Werner Brandt and SAP co-Chief Executive Officer Bill McDermott, the only board members to take the stand, fared so poorly there.

Or perhaps it’s simply because of the way the trial has played out. “We’ve said from the start that our focus is on damages, that we are interested in resolution of this dispute and determining a reasonable number for damages, and putting the matter behind us,” an SAP spokesperson told me. “The witnesses we call support that focus. Please keep in mind that there were 73 names on the witness list when it was submitted. Since that list was submitted, the scope of the trial has been narrowed considerably and the length of the trial has been shortened.”

UPDATE: I’m told Kagermann was prepared to testify live, but did not due to time constraints. His video deposition was played instead.

PREVIOUSLY:

• Damages Expert to SAP: You Owe Me $14 Million and Oracle Four Times That
• Oracle, SAP and the Apotheker Sideshow
• Better Late: SAP Co-CEO Apologizes for Oracle IP Theft
• SAP Co-CEO Expected to Testify in Oracle Trial Today
• HP to Oracle: Leave Léo Alone
• Oracle Still Hoping to Snag HP’s Apotheker for SAP Trial
• HP CEO to Oracle: Here’s Looking at You, Kid–Suntory Time!
• Ellison to Self: Damn, Damn. I Knew I Should Have Said $4.5 Billion
• SAP Attorney: Board Knew TomorrowNow Was Infringing at Time of Acquisition
• Oracle Co-President on SAP’s Damages Offer: “It’s Crazy”
• Oracle Enlists Process Servers, Not PIs, to Find HP CEO
• Oracle-SAP Trial: Ellison Swaps Katana for Poison Darts
• Objection: Mr. Ellison Is Referring to the Defendant as “Choleric of Temper” Again
• Oracle Lands Early Shots in SAP Trial
• Your Honor, We Object to Mr. Ellison’s Repeated Use of the Term “Slimy Weasels”
• Oracle to HP CEO: Chicken!
• Oracle Vs. SAP: We Got a Right to Pick a Little Fight–Bonanza!
• SAP’s Tab in Oracle Case: $120 Million and Counting
• Gag Order Denied in Oracle, SAP Trial
• Ellison Taunts HP CEO a Second Time
• SAP to Ellison: Save the Drama for Your Mama
• Ellison to HP CEO: “Warrior, Come Out to Plaaeeay!
• SAP: Please Gag Oracle
• HP Scandal Sucks in New York Times Columnist Over Conflict of Interest
• Welch to HP Board: You Don’t Know Jack!
• Insiders Criticize Ellison For HP CEO Slam
• Was Apotheker HP’s First Choice of CEO?
• HP Names Ex-SAP Chief Apotheker as CEO

Called as a witness for Oracle, Catz reiterated an earlier point made by Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, saying that had SAP licensed the materials that its TomorrowNow subsidiary ultimately pilfered, it would have cost “billions.” She also reminded SAP’s legal team that her email on SAP/TomorrowNow as a competitive threat was written without knowing about TomorrowNow’s copyright infringement.

Worse, she dismissed SAP’s offer of $40 million in damages as laughable. “SAP paying us damages of $40 million would be a reward for their bad behavior. “It’s like taking someone’s $2,000 watch and hocking it for $20, and then offering to give us $20. It’s crazy. It completely undervalues the entire basis for our industry.”

A powerful jab, and one that’s making the rounds in media reports on the trial today.

PREVIOUSLY:

• Oracle Enlists Process Servers, Not PIs, to Find HP CEO
• Oracle-SAP Trial: Ellison Swaps Katana for Poison Darts
• Objection: Mr. Ellison Is Referring to the Defendant as “Choleric of Temper” Again
• Oracle Lands Early Shots in SAP Trial
• Your Honor, We Object to Mr. Ellison’s Repeated Use of the Term “Slimy Weasels”
• Oracle to HP CEO: Chicken!
• Oracle Vs. SAP: We Got a Right to Pick a Little Fight–Bonanza!
• SAP’s Tab in Oracle Case: $120 Million and Counting
• Gag Order Denied in Oracle, SAP Trial
• Ellison Taunts HP CEO a Second Time
• SAP to Ellison: Save the Drama for Your Mama
• Ellison to HP CEO: “Warrior, Come Out to Plaaeeay!
• SAP: Please Gag Oracle
• HP Scandal Sucks in New York Times Columnist Over Conflict of Interest
• Welch to HP Board: You Don’t Know Jack!
• Insiders Criticize Ellison For HP CEO Slam
• Was Apotheker HP’s First Choice of CEO?
• HP Names Ex-SAP Chief Apotheker as CEO

One month after resigning his position at Hewlett-Packard amid allegations of business-standard improprieties, ousted HP CEO Mark Hurd has a new gig: Co-president of Oracle.

Ending a long weekend’s worth of speculation, Oracle on Monday said Hurd will serve as co-president alongside Safra Catz, taking up a role vacated by current president and fellow scandal cultivator Charles Phillips, who has evidently resigned.

“Mark did a brilliant job at HP and I expect he’ll do even better at Oracle,” Oracle CEO Larry Ellison said in statement. “There is no executive in the IT world with more relevant experience than Mark.”

Indeed, Hurd’s knowledge of HP’s (HPQ) server and data-storage-systems business will undoubtedly come in handy at Oracle (ORCL), which has been aggressively moving into that very space ever since its acquisition of Sun. In that sense, Hurd’s hiring is a real coup for Oracle. Who better to put the screws to a rival than a former CEO with a bone to pick?

Perhaps that’s what Larry Ellison was thinking when he spanked HP for canning Hurd. “The HP board just made the worst personnel decision since the idiots on the Apple board fired Steve Jobs  many years ago,” he said at the time. “That decision nearly destroyed Apple and would have if Steve hadn’t come back and saved them.”

“The Sun integration is going even better than we expected,” said Oracle President Safra Catz. “We believe that Sun will make a significant contribution to our fourth quarter earnings per share as well as meet the profitability goals we set for next year.”

Oracle (ORCL) said its net income for the quarter fell to $1.2 billion, or 23 cents a share, from $1.3 billion, or 26 cents a share last year. But revenue rose to $6.4 billion from $5.5 billion. Excluding items, earnings for the quarter were 38 cents a share, which is what analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters had been expecting.

Two last details worth noting: Revenue from new software licenses rose 13 percent during the quarter. Another sign that enterprise spending on technology is on the rise.

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison is a funny guy. From the company’s earnings release:

“Every quarter we grab huge chunks of market share from SAP,” said Oracle CEO, Larry Ellison. “SAP’s most recent quarter was the best quarter of their year, only down 15%, while Oracle’s application sales were up 21%. But SAP is well ahead of us in the number of CEOs for this year, announcing their third and fourth, while we only had one.”

Oracle Reports GAAP EPS of $0.23, Non-GAAP EPS of $0.38

REDWOOD SHORES, Calif., March 25, 2010 — Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ: ORCL) today announced fiscal 2010 Q3 GAAP total revenues were up 17% to $6.4 billion, while non- GAAP total revenues were up 18% to $6.5 billion. Excluding the impact of Sun Microsystems, Inc., which Oracle acquired on January 26, 2010, GAAP total revenue grew 7%. GAAP new software license revenues were up 13% to $1.7 billion, and up 10% to $1.7 billion excluding Sun. GAAP software license updates and product support revenues were up 13% to $3.3 billion, while non-GAAP software license updates and product support revenues were up 12% to $3.3 billion. GAAP operating income was down 5% to $1.8 billion, and GAAP operating margin was 29%. Non-GAAP operating income was up 13% to $2.9 billion, and non-GAAP operating margin was 45%. GAAP net income was down 10% to $1.2 billion, while non-GAAP net income was up 9% to $1.9 billion. GAAP earnings per share were $0.23, down 11% compared to last year while non-GAAP earnings per share were up 9% to $0.38. GAAP operating cash flow on a trailing twelve-month basis was $8.2 billion.

“Our solid top line growth, coupled with disciplined expense management, was key in generating $8.0 billion of free cash flow over the last twelve months,” said Oracle CFO Jeff Epstein.

“The Sun integration is going even better than we expected,” said Oracle President, Safra Catz. “We believe that Sun will make a significant contribution to our fourth quarter earnings per share as well as meet the profitability goals we set for next year.”

“Exadata is the fastest growing product in Oracle’s history,” said Oracle President, Charles Phillips. “Introduced a little over a year ago, the Exadata pipeline is now approaching $400 million with Q4 bookings forecast at nearly $100 million. This strengthens both sales growth and profitability in our Sun server and storage businesses.”

“Every quarter we grab huge chunks of market share from SAP,” said Oracle CEO, Larry Ellison. “SAP’s most recent quarter was the best quarter of their year, only down 15%, while Oracle’s application sales were up 21%. But SAP is well ahead of us in the number of CEOs for this year, announcing their third and fourth, while we only had one.”
In addition, Oracle’s Board of Directors declared a cash dividend of $0.05 per share of outstanding common stock to be paid to stockholders of record as of the close of business on April 14, 2010, with a payment date of May 5, 2010. Future declarations of quarterly dividends and the establishment of future record and payment dates are subject to the final determination of Oracle’s Board of Directors.

Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had estimated Oracle (ORCL) would post earnings, excluding special items, of 36 cents a share on $5.7 billion in revenue. “We delivered results which were substantially better than we expected on both the top and bottom line,” Oracle Chief Financial Officer Jeff Epstein said in a statement.

Remarking on the company’s proposed acquisition of Sun (JAVA) in an earnings release, Oracle President Safra Catz said, “We expect the European Commission to unconditionally clear the acquisition of Sun in January. I want to thank all of our customers for the overwhelming support they have given us during this process.”

Shares of Oracle rose more than 4 percent to $23.87 in after-hours trading, following the earnings announcement, before slipping back to $22.88. The company’s stock is up by about a third this year.

Below, Oracle’s earnings release:

Oracle Reports Q2 GAAP EPS of 29 Cents Up 15%, Non-GAAP EPS of 39 Cents Up 15%

Total Revenues Up, New Software License Sales Up, Operating Margin Up, Operating Cash Flow Up
December 17, 2009: 04:00 PM ET

Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ: ORCL) today announced fiscal 2010 Q2 GAAP earnings per share of $0.29, up 15% compared to last year. Second quarter GAAP total revenues were up 4% to $5.9 billion, while quarterly GAAP net income was up 12% to $1.5 billion. GAAP new software license revenues were up 2% to $1.7 billion. GAAP software license updates and product support revenues were up 14% to $3.2 billion. GAAP operating income was up 10% to $2.2 billion and GAAP operating margin was up 200 basis points to 37%. GAAP operating cash flow on a trailing twelve-month basis was $8.7 billion, up 7%.

Second quarter non-GAAP earnings per share were up 15% to $0.39. Non-GAAP total revenues were up 3% to $5.9 billion, while non-GAAP net income was up 12% to $2.0 billion, compared to the same quarter last year. Non-GAAP operating income was up 9% to $2.9 billion and non-GAAP operating margin was up 280 basis points to 49%.

“We delivered results which were substantially better than we expected on both the top and bottom line, growing non-GAAP operating margins by 280 basis points to 49%, the highest Q2 non-GAAP operating margin in our history,” said Oracle CFO Jeff Epstein. “Our solid top line growth, coupled with disciplined expense management, was key in generating $8.4 billion of free cash flow over the last twelve months.”

“We expect the European Commission to unconditionally clear the acquisition of Sun in January,” said Oracle President Safra Catz. “I want to thank all of our customers for the overwhelming support they have given us during this process.”

“For the fourth consecutive quarter, Oracle took market share from SAP in every region around the world,” said Oracle President Charles Phillips. “In constant currency, our applications business grew 1% in the Americas and 2% in Asia Pacific versus a negative 35% and negative 34% respectively for SAP.”

“Sun’s new SPARC Solaris system and Sun’s new Exadata database machine both run the Oracle database faster than IBM’s fastest computer,” said Oracle CEO Larry Ellison. “We expect Sun to rapidly improve both its market share and margins once this merger closes.”

In addition, Oracle’s Board of Directors declared a cash dividend of $0.05 per share of outstanding common stock to be paid to stockholders of record as of the close of business on January 19, 2010, with a payment date of February 9, 2010. Future declarations of quarterly dividends and the establishment of future record and payment dates are subject to the final determination of Oracle’s Board of Directors.

A: Kroes isn’t losing $100 million a month on Sun Microsystems.

Much as Ellison would like to blame the European Commission for yesterday’s bloodletting at Sun, responsibility lies squarely with Oracle (ORCL). For while Ellison complains that every month the $7.4 billion acquisition is delayed amounts to a $100 million loss for Sun (JAVA), he has not yet given the EC good reason to approve it–at least according Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes, who’s disappointed with Oracle’s cooperation in the commission’s antitrust probe so far.

Kroes said as much in a recent meeting with Oracle president Safra Catz, according to Jonathan Todd, the commission’s spokesman for competition.

“Kroes expressed her disappointment that Oracle failed to produce, despite repeated requests, either hard evidence that there were no competition problems or a proposal for a remedy to the competition concerns identified by the commission,” Todd told Bloomberg. “Kroes reiterated to Catz the commission’s willingness to move quickly towards a decision but underlined that a rapid solution lies in Oracle’s hands. Either they have to give us the information to prove that our competition concerns are not well founded or offer remedies to satisfy our concerns.”

So if Oracle is looking for a quick solution to the case, it best provide one–otherwise, it’s looking at $100 million a month in losses at Sun.

A: Kroes isn’t losing $100 million a month on Sun Microsystems.

Much as Ellison would like to blame the European Commission for yesterday’s bloodletting at Sun, responsibility lies squarely with Oracle (ORCL). For while Ellison complains that every month the $7.4 billion acquisition is delayed amounts to a $100 million loss for Sun (JAVA), he has not yet given the EC good reason to approve it–at least according Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes, who’s disappointed with Oracle’s cooperation in the commission’s antitrust probe so far.

Kroes said as much in a recent meeting with Oracle president Safra Catz, according to Jonathan Todd, the commission’s spokesman for competition.

“Kroes expressed her disappointment that Oracle failed to produce, despite repeated requests, either hard evidence that there were no competition problems or a proposal for a remedy to the competition concerns identified by the commission,” Todd told Bloomberg. “Kroes reiterated to Catz the commission’s willingness to move quickly towards a decision but underlined that a rapid solution lies in Oracle’s hands. Either they have to give us the information to prove that our competition concerns are not well founded or offer remedies to satisfy our concerns.”

So if Oracle is looking for a quick solution to the case, it best provide one–otherwise, it’s looking at $100 million a month in losses at Sun.

For its fiscal first quarter, Oracle’s net income rose to $1.1 billion, or 22 cents a share, from $1 billion, or 21 cents a share in the same period last year. Revenue for the period ended in August fell five percent to $5.1 billion. Excluding special items, earnings for the quarter would have been 30 cents a share. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had been expecting earnings, excluding items, of 30 cents a share, and $5.2 billion in revenue.

“By substantially improving operating margins we were able to increase Q1 earnings per share even though revenues decreased slightly,” Safra Catz, Oracle’s president, said in a statement. “We grew non-GAAP operating margins by 570 basis points to 46 percent in our seasonally smallest quarter. Our operating model continues to drive earnings for our stockholders.”

Yeah, but good luck trying to tell them that. Shares of Oracle (ORCL) have fallen more than three percent to $21.42 in after-hours trading following the earnings announcement.

Fortune magazine–which never met a list it did not like to make–had a solid group of women tech types on its “50 Most Powerful Women 2009” roster, the annual survey it posted yesterday.

Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz made the Top Ten this year, clocking in at No. 8.

Other women geek types–many from Silicon Valley–on the list include:

Ursula Burns, CEO of Xerox (XRX) at No. 9; IBM (IBM) Global Sales and Distribution SVP Ginni Rometty at No. 11; Oracle (ORCL) President Safra Catz at No. 12; Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) Technology Solutions Group EVP Ann Livermore at No. 13; Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg at No. 22; Charlene Begley, president and CEO, GE (GE) Enterprise Solutions at No. 27; Lorrie Norrington, president of eBay (EBAY) Marketplaces at No. 40; HP CFO Cathie Lesjack at No. 42; and, finally, Google (GOOG) Search Products and User Experience VP Marissa Mayer at No. 44.

The conference associated with the Fortune issue, spearheaded by Pattie Sellers, will take place next week, starting Monday, in Carlsbad, Calif.

Fortune is part of Time Inc., which is owned by Time Warner (TWX).

Bartz, Sandberg and others will be interviewed onstage, along with Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A) chairman and CEO Warren Buffett.

Will BoomTown be in attendance, with my trusty Flip digital video at the ready? Yes, indeedy, so the lady geeks should beware–and I am talking to you, Sandberg!

Until then, here’s a cable television interview Bartz did today on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” Clocking in at almost 12 minutes, it’s classic Carol, with sassy catchphrases and jokes about being a really tough lady, but with little new news–except for her saying she would have sold to Microsoft (MSFT) when it was offering $33 a share way back when, because she is not “stupid.”

Indeed not.

Here’s the video:

Since May 2007, Epstein had been CFO of Oberon Media, an Internet game provider and publisher funded by Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Oak Investment Partners and Lehman Brothers. Epstein previously worked at DoubleClick, King World and ADVO, according to Oracle. Epstein is on the board at Priceline (PCLN) and MDC Partners (MDCA). Epstein, 52 years old, has an M.B.A. from Stanford and a B.A. from Yale.

Read the rest of this post