California-based Oracle Corp. is placing its bets on its higher-end servers, and the gains are beginning to emerge. The company reported revenue of $8.4 billion in the first quarter, a 12 % increase, with profits of $1.8 billion.

Strong results in fresh software system sales and a boost in in license updates and support services revenue are largely accredited with the increase, but double digit sales growth for its higher end servers also played a role. The revenue report was just beyond experts' predictions of $8.35 billion.

The business has been changing focus from lower end servers toward higher-end equipment such as the Sun Sparc M4000 servers following a decrease in hardware purchases following the acquisition of Sun Microsystems in last year.

The Fight Against Falling Purchases

Since the purchase of Sun, Oracle's hardware purchases have been dropping. Hardware numbers in the first quarter were $1.03 billion, a drop of 5 % from the exact quarter last year. There was, nonetheless, expansion in the core Sparc servers product line.

Oracle senior leadership recognized that high-end hardware systems, such as the Sun Sparc M5000, increased in the double digits for the first quarter, as x86 server sales maintained their decrease, a sign that validates a shift in specialization to higher-end solutions. The executives said they were not worried in relation to the decrease in lower-end hardware sales and that the primary focus will carry on on high end systems.

Reason For Altering Sun Servers Specialization

Upon acquiring Sun Microsystems, Oracle explained it did not propose to to compete in the area of lower end server hardware but rather zero in on on premium servers, like the Sun Sparc M4000 and Sun Sparc M5000 servers.

Apart from decreasing numbers for those systems, a big explanation for Oracle to halt aspiring to compete for low-end hardware sales is that to turn a profit a large product sales volume is necessary. With other hardware giants like Dell and Hewlett-Packard now contending in the lower end system market, the likelihood of rising sales volume to high sufficient numbers to make a profit is largely decreased.

Specialization In Higher-end Sun Servers

Amongst the high-end Sun servers Oracle is transitioning to are the M-series Sparc servers, including the M3000, M4000, M5000, M8000 and M9000. This set of flexible Sun servers is tailored for challenging enterprise systems. Oracle's other high quality server hardware include Exadata and Exalogic.

New Sparc servers are on the way, too, as part of the shift away from lower-end servers, like x86 servers, to premium products. When revealing earnings for the initial quarter, Oracle also announced additional updating of its high end lineup, like a new Sparc microprocessor and Sparc Supercluster server.

Oracle senior leadership have said they anticipate hardware numbers to continue to climb as the specialization in premium systems is ramped up, eventually letting the company return to the numbers it had before acquiring Sun.

No matter if you happen to be shopping for a lower-end or high end server, SourceTech has a wide range of reasonably priced servers, including new, refurbished and used Sun Sparc M4000 and Sun Sparc M5000 servers.