Written by a smart investor regarding Oracle:
To understand the hyperbole of the Oracle management team, go back 3 years to 2013 and listen to what Ellison said about "engineered systems" in the Q4 press release: “Exadata, Exalogic, Exalytics, SPARC SuperCluster and our other engineered systems grew at a rate of 45% in Q4 as we took considerable market share from our primary competitor – IBM P-Series – which declined 32% in their most recent quarter,” said Oracle CEO, Larry Ellison. “We sold over 1,200 engineered systems in the quarter and over 3,000 during the year. Our fast growing engineered systems business is now more than one-third of our overall hardware business which is one of the reasons we believe hardware will be a growth story in Oracle’s FY14.”
Hardware products revenue in 2013: $3.033 billion.
Hardware products revenue in 2014: $2.976 billion.
Hardware products revenue in 2015: $2.825 billion.
Hardware products revenue in 2016: $2.471 billion.