(Bloomberg) -- Oracle Corp.s push into cloud computing is picking up momentum, sparking a fourth straight quarter of revenue gains for the software maker.

The company, which set a record closing high Wednesday for its shares, reported total sales that easily topped analysts estimates.

Oracles cloud businesses grew 58 percent in the fiscal fourth quarter.

Meanwhile, new software licenses, a measure thats tied to the companys traditional on-premise software offerings, declined 5 percent compared with a drop of 16 percent in the previous period.

Oracles long shift to the cloud, which lets customers access services without installing them on their own computers, is now producing more sturdy growth, indicating that the company can compete against rivals such as Salesforce.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp.

It benefited in particular with applications that help companies in areas such as human resources, customer relationship management and financials.

Sales for that piece of Oracles business, which was detailed for the first time in the earnings report, jumped almost 70 percent.

Everything looks very, very strong, said Joel Fishbein, an analyst at BTIG. Oracle is a legitimate and formidable cloud player.

Shares of Oracle rose as much as 12 percent in extended trading after the earnings were released. Investors have been optimistic this year with the companys stock increasing 20 percent to a record $46.33 at the close in New York.

We continue to experience rapid adoption of the Oracle Cloud, co-Chief Executive Officer Safra Catz said in a statement. This cloud hyper-growth is expanding our operating margins, and we expect earnings per share growth to accelerate in fiscal 2018.

Adjusted revenue increased 3 percent to $10.9 billion in the period ended May 31, the company said Wednesday in a statement.

On average, analysts had projected $10.5 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Profit, excluding some costs, was 89 cents a share, topping the estimate of 78 cents.

Net income rose 15 percent to $3.2 billion.

During a call with analysts, Catz said she expects adjusted revenue in constant currency to rise 4 percent to 6 percent in the current quarter.

She also projected adjusted earnings of 59 cents to 61 cents per share, adding that Oracle should see double-digit growth in earnings per share for the fiscal year.

Oracles finally turned the corner in terms of its cloud momentum, said Josh Olson, an analyst at Edward Jones. For years, its been kind of struggle. But theyve, I think, found their footing.

Oracle executives used the call to tout the interest of customers in its cloud business.

Last month, the company said that AT&T Inc., the telecommunications giant, had signed a deal to move thousands of databases to Oracles new platforms.

While it provided no revenue at all in Q4, its a very strategic win as a reference to all of our customers about the modernization of databases and the movement of them to the cloud, co-CEO Mark Hurd said during the call.

Still, the better-than-anticipated performance in the traditional business helped deliver much of the positive news in the quarter, said Pat Walravens, an analyst at JMP Securities.

The real outperformance came in the part of the business that theyre moving away from, Walravens said.

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Oracle Revenue Blows Away Estimates on Surging Cloud Demand - MSPmentor

At CorpInfo LLC, cloud is their business and business has been very good.

So good, in fact, that the cloud-focused subsidiary of a legacy reseller has grown from fewer than a handful of full-time staffers 18 months ago, to 54 employees today.

They expect that headcount to swell past 150 by the end of 2018, with operations expanding beyond current markets in California and Texas, to cities across the U.S.

Such rapid growth brings with it a host of exciting if sometimes daunting challenges, and this week, MSPmentor caught up with Josh Binnie head of talent at CorpInfo to discuss the gargantuan and hypercompetitive mission of recruiting and hiring so many qualified cloud engineers.

As a professional services company, if it was easy wed all be out of work, he said. Thats one of the things about being a good engineer: Youre never going to find yourself out of work.

CorpInfo is an AWS Premier Partner that specializes in migrating clients from on-premise to cloud environements, and providing managed services to help customers run cloud infrastructures.

Previously known as Desktop Solutions, CorpInfo weathered some lean years before settling on a growth strategy that includes a robust cloud component.

The company has several public-sector clients and expects growth in that business line, among others.

Their need for quality technical talent is acute.

Mostly, its engineers; cloud engineers and cloud solutions architects, Binnie said.

That means people with software and cloud development backgrounds.

That could be Azure, AWS hands on, paid, professional experience within cloud, he explained.

But in an acknowledgement of the difficulty of the challenge, Binnie is quick to qualify the description of his target candidate.

We will take people who have extraordinary talent and can learn quickly, he said. They must have a baseline of technical knowledge (but) we definitely dont have a cookie-cutter approach to hiring; were the opposite of that.

As much as technical proficiency, Binnie said he looks for a flair that will add something to the greater team.

Weve regularly hired people because they bring something extraordinary to the table rather than because their butt fits the shape of that seat, he said.

Along with cyber security specialists, engineers with cloud skills are among the most sought-after workers in the technology space.

Landing and successfully onboarding such candidates is only half the battle.

We expect people to have regular offers, Binnie conceded. Were constantly aware that we have to retain good talent.

CorpInfo, he estimates, spends a little less than the roughly $5,000 per hire thats typical in the space.

But, Binnie said, the company spends more than average on retaining employees, through extensive training and development, and other means.

Its the nature of the working environment that makes a difference; the nature of the projects, he said.

They must be doing something right.

This month, CorpInfo landed on Inc.coms 2017 list of top places to work.

The growing technical demands of the modern IT managed services space points to an increasingly challenging recruiting environment going forward, Binnie predicts.

And, to be clear, the MSP is also looking for talent on the sales side.

Talent has continued to become more and more important, he said. We have 20 years doing this. Your approach to talent grows and matures.

It becomes apparent that you need more and more folks who can work independently and can work intelligently, Binnie added. Its fundamental. Its an enormous part of the business.

To learn more about working at CorpInfo, visit their job board and/or watch this short video:

Send tips and news to MSPmentorNews@Penton.com.

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MSP Fights to Hire Scarce Cloud Engineers - MSPmentor

Internet connectivity is the great enabler of the 21st century global economy. Studies worldwide unequivocally link increases in Internet penetration rates and expansion of Internet infrastructure to improved education, employment rates, and overall GDP development. Over the next decade, the Internet will reinvent itself yet again in ways we can only imagine today, and cloud computing will be the primary operating platform of this revolution.

But not for everyone. Worldwide, the estimated Internet penetration rate ranges between 44% and 50%, much of which is through less productive mobile devices than desktop workstations. Overall, Internet penetration rates in developed countries stand at over twice that of underdeveloped economies. For many, high-quality Internet services are simply cost-prohibitive. Low-quality infrastructure and devices, unreliable connectivity, and low data rates relegate millions to a global online underclass that lack the resources and skills necessary to more fully participate in the global economy. First recognized as early as the 1990s, these persistent quantitative inequities in overall availability, usability, etc., demarcate a world of Internet "haves" and "have not's" known commonly as the "Digital Divide".

In the decade to come, cloud computing and computational capacity and storage as a service will transform the global economy in ways more substantial than the initial Internet revolution. Public data will become its own public resource that will drive smart cities, improve business processes, and enable innovation across multiple sectors. As the instrumented, data-driven world gathers momentum, well-postured economies will begin to make qualitative leaps ahead of others, creating an even greater chasm between the haves and have not's that we will call Digital Divide 2.0.

At one end of the chasm are modern information-driven economies that will exploit the foundational technologies of the initial Internet revolution to propel their economies forward as never before. In particular, cloud technologies will unleash new capabilities to innovate, collaborate and manage complex data sets that will facilitate start-ups, create new jobs, and improve public governance.

Meanwhile, many in the developing world will continue to struggle with the quantitative inequities of the first Digital Divide. Developing economies will very likely continue to make some progress; however, their inability to rapidly bridge the Internet capacity gap will inhibit them from fully participating in the emerging, instrumented economies of the developed world. Failing to keep pace, these economies will continue to face the perennial problems of lack of investment, lack of transparency within public institutions, and a persistent departure of talent to more developed economies.

In the early 1990s, there was much sloganeering and some real public policyin the United States regarding the development of "information superhighways" that would connect schools and libraries nationwide. Information sharing across educational institutions provided the critical mass for launching today's emerging information economy. However, implementation was uneven, and since that time there remain winners and losers, both nationally and globally.

As cloud computing emerges as the principal operating platform for the next-generation information economy, we are again challenged by many of the same questions from two decades ago: who will benefit most from the upcoming revolution? Will progress be limited solely to wealthy urban and suburban centers, already hard-wired with the necessary high-capacity infrastructure, and flush with raw, university-educated talent? Will poorer and rural economies be left to fall that much further behind?

Not necessarily. Industry experts and economists worldwide broadly recognize the tremendous latent economic value of cloud. Clever public-private partnerships in cloud adoption are reinvigorating and transforming municipalities. Shaping public policy begins with recognizing the transformative power of this technology and the role it can play in enabling a wide range of economic sectors.

Now is the time for public sector authorities, private enterprise, and global thought leaders to develop creative approaches to ensure some level of equity in global information technology access. Engagement now may help avoid repeating and exacerbating the original Digital Divide and posture cloud computing as a global enabler, rather than a global divider.

By Michael McMahon, Director, Cyber Strategy and Analysis at Innovative Analytics & Training

Related topics: Access Providers, Broadband, Cloud Computing, Data Center, Policy & Regulation

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Cloud Computing and Digital Divide 2.0 - CircleID

Last January, the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) issued a circularaddressed to both the national and local government prescribing the Philippine governments Cloud First Policy.

The policy is aimed at reducing the cost of government information and communications technology (ICT), increasing employee productivity, and developing better citizen online services through the use of cloud computing technology.

Various governments such as the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom have done similar Cloud First Policies.

So what is cloud computing?

The DICT defines cloud computing as a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g. networks, servers, storage, applications and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.

Its characteristics include on-demand self service, broad network access, resource pooling, rapid elasticity and measured service, the department explained.

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What are the benefits that can be derived from using cloud computing technology? DICT says these are inter-agency collaboration, operational continuity and business recovery, faster deployment of services, greater budget control and decreased spending on legacy infrastructure.

The initial DICT GovCloud infrastructure was set up in 2013 by DOST-ICT Office as part of the Integrated Government Philippines (iGovPhil) Project which aims to provide cloud infrastructure access to government agencies.

And then, to pursue its cloud-first policy, government relaunched the Government Cloud or GovCloud initiative last March.

The DICT awarded the P373-million build, operate and transfer a complete cloud solution project to the Vibal Group, a cloud and education technology company which used to be known as a book publisher.

Vibal said GovCloud would use a hybrid cloud strategy that would use both private and public cloud, adding that creation of private in-country data center would ensure data security, while the off-premise public cloud would make online information and services readily available to government agencies.

The company then partnered with a number of technology firms, including Microsoft for the cloud undertaking. Vibal and Microsoft have been official partners since 2012, when Vibal made available its interactive e-books compatible to Windows OS.

Microsoft managing director Karrie Ilagan said their strength and commitment to security, privacy and transparency would empower the government to achieve the best for its citizens.

While cloud computing produces efficiency, productivity and would provide better citizen services, security is paramount to efficiency, especially with the advent of state-sponsored cyberattacks and cyber-espionage.

DICT launched the National CyberSecurity Plan of 2022 just last month in a bid to protect every single user of the internet in the country. This, of course, is timely especially since the Philippines is among the top 10 countries with malware threats.

With the increasing incidence of cyber espionage and cyberattacks initiated by nation-states, there is now a call for a Digital Geneva Convention, whereby governments should commit to avoiding attacking citizens, critical infrastructure and the private sector; reporting vulnerabilities rather than stockpiling, selling or exploiting them; pledging to aid in the containment and recovery from cyberattacks; and creating a trusted national and global IT infrastructure.

Microsoft offers what it calls a secure, trusted cloud which it emphasized is the most important value that it provides compared to other vendors.

Describing its trusted cloud, Microsoft assured that it helps protect data and has the most comprehensive compliance cover all over the world, including solutions for compliance with the Data Privacy Act of the Philippines, protects major IT systems reliably with Microsoft Disaster Recovery, and offers the most IT flexibility with a truly consistent hybrid cloud.

To show its commitment to a secure, trusted cloud, Microsoft has signed the ICT for Shared Prosperity Technology Manifesto with the DICT. It identifies national challenges and issues that need to be addressed, and key technology pillars that can help in championing and driving economic progress in the country.

Microsoft earlier announced that it would continue to invest $1 billion yearly on cybersecurity research and development in the coming years. The amount excludes acquisitions which the company may make in the sector.

The cloud has allowed companies like Microsoft to create much more sophisticated tools to guard against increasingly cunning attackers. Instead of having to manage their own security, companies also now tap cloud service providers like Microsoft to keep their data secure.

Microsoft has what it calls the Enterprise Mobility + Security that allows its clients to get identity-driven protection against todays attacks.

Its product named Azure is said to have the most comprehensive compliance coverage. It is the most trusted cloud for US government institutions.

With the Data Privacy Act of 2012, Microsoft says it has already designed Azure with industry-leading security measures and privacy policies to safeguard data in the cloud, including categories of personal data identified by the Data Privacy Act.

There is also Microsoft Dynamics 365 which are intelligent cloud applications that connect data across sources.

Microsoft explains that its cloud product combines the companys current customer relationship management and enterprise resource planning cloud services into a single service, and includes new, purpose-built applications to help manage specific business functions.

At the end of the day, it is the citizenry who will decide whether or not governments new policies and programs on ICT have improved the delivery of public services.

For comments, e-mail at philstarhiddenagenda@yahoo.com

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Cloud first - Philippine Star