About Oracle Corp

Oracle Corporation (Oracle) provides products and services that address enterprise information technology (IT) environments. The company’s products and services include enterprise applications and infrastructure offerings that are delivered worldwide through a variety of flexible and interoperable IT deployment models. These models include on-premise deployments, cloud-based deployments, and hybrid deployments (an approach that combines both on-premise and cloud-based deployment), such as its Oracle Cloud@Customer offering (an instance of Oracle Cloud in a customer’s own data center). Accordingly, the company offers choice and flexibility to its customers and facilitate the product, service and deployment combinations that best suit its customers’ needs. The company’s customers include businesses of many sizes, government agencies, educational institutions and resellers that it markets and sells to directly through its worldwide sales force and indirectly through the Oracle Partner Network. Using Oracle technologies, its customers build, deploy, run, manage and support their internal and external products, services and business operations, including for example, a global cloud applications developer that utilizes Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) to power its software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings; a multi-national financial institution that runs its banking applications using the Oracle Exadata Database Machine; and a global consumer products company that leverages Oracle Fusion Cloud Enterprise Resource Planning for its accounting processes, consolidation and financial planning functions. Oracle Cloud Services offerings, which include Oracle SaaS and OCI offerings, provide comprehensive and integrated applications and infrastructure services delivered via cloud-based deployment models. Oracle Cloud Services integrate the IT components, including software, hardware and services, on a customer’s behalf in a cloud-based IT environment that Oracle deploys, manages, supports and upgrades for the customer and that a customer may access utilizing common web browsers via a broad spectrum of devices. Oracle Cloud Services are designed to be rapidly deployable to enable customers shorter time to innovation; intuitive for casual and experienced users; easily maintainable to reduce upgrade, integration and testing work; connectable among differing deployment models to enable interchangeability and extendibility between IT environments; compatible to easily move workloads between the Oracle Cloud and other IT environments; cost-effective by requiring lower upfront customer investment; and secure, standards-based and reliable. Oracle cloud license and on-premise license deployment offerings include Oracle Applications, Oracle Database and Oracle Middleware software offerings, among others, which customers deploy using IT infrastructure from the Oracle Cloud or their own cloud-based or on-premise IT environments. Substantially all customers, at their option, purchase license support contracts when they purchase an Oracle license. Oracle hardware products include Oracle Engineered Systems, servers, storage and industry-specific products, among others. Customers generally opt to purchase hardware support contracts when they purchase Oracle hardware products. Oracle also offers services to assist the company’s customers and partners to maximize the performance of their Oracle purchases. Providing choice and flexibility to Oracle customers as to when and how they deploy Oracle applications and infrastructure technologies is an important element of the company’s corporate strategy. The company’s investments in, and innovation with respect to, Oracle products and services that it offers through its three businesses (cloud and license, hardware and services businesses) are another important element of its corporate strategy. The company has a deep understanding as to how applications and infrastructure technologies interact and function with one another, including through the use of OCI to power its Oracle Fusion SaaS Applications, which it and its customers use to run internal business processes. The company focuses its development efforts on improving the performance, security, operation, integration and cost-effectiveness of its offerings relative to its competitors; facilitating the ease with which organizations are able to deploy, use, manage and maintain its offerings; and incorporating emerging technologies within its offerings to enable leaner business processes, automation and innovation. For example, the Oracle Autonomous Database is designed to deliver transformational infrastructure as an OCI offering that utilizes machine learning capabilities. After an initial purchase of Oracle products and services, the company’s customers can continue to benefit from its offerings, research and development efforts and deep IT expertise by electing to purchase and renew Oracle support offerings for their license and hardware deployments, which may include product enhancements that it periodically deliver to its products, and by renewing their Oracle Cloud Services contracts with it. The company’s selective and active acquisition program is another important element of its corporate strategy. The company’s acquisitions enhance the products and services that it can offer to customers, expand its customer base, provide greater scale to accelerate innovation, grow its revenues and earnings, and increase stockholder value. The company has invested billions of dollars over time to acquire a number of companies, products, services and technologies that add to, are complementary to, or have otherwise enhanced its existing offerings, including its acquisition of Cerner Corporation (Cerner) in June 2022. The company has three businesses, cloud and license, hardware, and services. Oracle Applications and Infrastructure Technologies Oracle’s comprehensive portfolio of applications and infrastructure technologies is designed to address an organization’s IT environment needs, including business process, infrastructure and applications development requirements, among others. Oracle technologies are based upon industry standards and are designed to be enterprise-grade, reliable, scalable and secure. Oracle applications and infrastructure technologies, including database and middleware software, as well as enterprise applications, virtualization, clustering, large-scale systems management and related infrastructure products and services are the building blocks of Oracle Cloud Services, the company’s partners’ cloud services, and its customers’ cloud IT environments. Oracle applications and infrastructure offerings are marketed and sold through its cloud and license, hardware, and services businesses and are delivered through the Oracle Cloud, or through other IT deployment models, including cloud-based, hybrid and on-premise deployments. The company can market and sell its Oracle SaaS and OCI offerings together to help new and existing customers migrate their extensive installed base of on-premise and cloud-based applications and infrastructure technologies to the Oracle Cloud. In addition, the company can market its Oracle SaaS and OCI services to a broader ecosystem of small and medium-sized businesses, non-IT lines of business purchasers, developers and partners due to the highly available, intuitive design, ease of access, low touch and low cost characteristics of the Oracle Cloud. In recent periods, customer demand for its applications and infrastructure technologies delivered through the company’s Oracle Cloud Services deployment models has increased. To address customer demand and enable customer choice, the company has introduced certain programs for customers to pivot their applications and infrastructure licenses and license support contracts to the Oracle Cloud for new deployments and to migrate to and expand with the Oracle Cloud for their existing workloads. The proportion of the company’s cloud services and license support revenues relative to its cloud license and on-premise license revenues, hardware revenues and services revenues has increased and its cloud services and license support revenues represented 71% of its total revenues during each of fiscal 2022. Oracle Applications Technologies Oracle applications technologies are marketed, sold, delivered and supported through the company’s cloud and license business. The company’s applications cloud services and license support revenues represented 42% of its total cloud services and license support revenues during fiscal 2022. Oracle applications offerings include the company’s Oracle Cloud SaaS offerings, which are available for customers as a subscription, and Oracle applications license offerings, which are available for customers to purchase for use within the Oracle Cloud, and other cloud-based and on-premise IT environments, and include the option to purchase related license support. Regardless of the deployment model selected, the company’s applications technologies are designed to reduce the risk, cost and complexity of its customers’ IT infrastructures, while supporting customer choice with flexible deployment models that readily enable performance, agility, compatibility and extendibility. The company’s applications technologies are generally designed using industry standard architectures to manage and automate core business functions across the enterprise, as well as to help customers differentiate and innovate in those processes unique to their industries or organizations. The company offers applications that are deployable to meet several business automation requirements across a broad range of industries. The company also offers industry-specific applications, which provide solutions to customers in the automotive, communications, construction and engineering, consumer goods, energy and water, financial services, food and beverage, government and education, healthcare, high technology, hospitality, industrial manufacturing, life sciences, media and entertainment, oil and gas, professional services, retail, travel and transportation, and wholesale distribution industries, among others. Oracle Cloud Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) Oracle’s broad spectrum of Oracle Cloud SaaS offerings provides customers a choice of software applications that are delivered via a cloud-based IT environment that it deploys, manages, upgrades and supports; and that customers purchase by entering into a subscription agreement with the company for a stated period. Customers access Oracle Cloud SaaS offerings utilizing common web browsers via a broad spectrum of devices. The company’s SaaS offerings are built upon open industry standards, such as SQL, Java and HTML5 for easier application accessibility, integration and development. The company’s SaaS offerings represent an industry leading business innovation platform, leveraging Oracle’s Next-Generation Cloud Infrastructure, and include a broad suite of modular, next generation cloud software applications spanning all core business functions, including among others: Oracle Fusion Cloud Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), which is designed to be a complete, global and integrated ERP solution to help organizations improve decision making and workforce productivity, and to optimize back-office operations by utilizing a single data and security model with a common user interface; Oracle Fusion Cloud Enterprise Performance Management (EPM), which is designed to analyze financial performance, drive accurate and agile financial plans, optimize the financial close and consolidation process, streamline account reconciliation and satisfy an organization’s reporting requirements; Oracle Fusion Cloud Supply Chain and Manufacturing Management (SCM), which is designed to help organizations create, optimize and digitize their supply chains and innovate products quickly; Oracle Fusion Cloud Human Capital Management (HCM), which is designed to help organizations find, develop and retain their talent, enable collaboration, provide complete workforce insights, improve business process efficiency, and enable users to connect to an integrated suite of HCM applications from any device; Oracle Fusion Sales, Service and Marketing, which are modules that are designed to be complete and integrated solutions to help organizations deliver consistent and personalized customer experiences across their customer channels, touch points, and interactions; NetSuite Applications Suite, which is designed to be a unified, cloud-based applications suite to run a company’s entire business and includes financials and ERP, customer relationship management, human resources, professional services and commerce, among others. The company’s NetSuite applications are generally marketed to small to medium-sized organizations; and Oracle Advertising, which enables organizations to leverage their own data and consumer data to inform and measure marketing strategies and programs. In addition, the company offers several cloud-based industry solutions to address specific customer needs within certain industries, including communications, construction and engineering, education, financial services, government, healthcare, hospitality, manufacturing, and retail, among others. Customers, partners and other interested parties may elect to subscribe to Oracle applications and infrastructure training and certification programs through a variety of online, cloud-based learning subscriptions offered by Oracle University. Learners generally have unlimited access to course content delivered during the subscription period. The company’s SaaS offerings are designed to support connected business processes in the cloud and are centered on an intuitive and conversational user experience, a responsive, open and flexible business core, and a common data model. Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP is a strategic suite of applications that is foundational to facilitating and extracting more business value out of the adoption of other Oracle SaaS offerings, such as Oracle Fusion Cloud HCM and Oracle Fusion Cloud EPM, as customers realize the value of a common data model that spans across core business applications. The company’s SaaS offerings remove business boundaries between front- and back-office activities. The company’s SaaS offerings are designed to deliver a secure data isolation architecture and flexible upgrades; self-service access controls for users; a Service-Oriented Architecture; built-in social, mobile and business insight capabilities (analytics); and a high performance, high availability infrastructure based on Oracle’s Next-Generation Cloud Infrastructure. These SaaS capabilities are designed to simplify customer IT environments, reduce time to implement and upgrade, enable agility, reduce risk, provide an intuitive user experience for casual and experienced users, and enable customers to focus resources on business growth opportunities. The company’s SaaS offerings are also designed to natively incorporate advanced technologies, such as Internet-of-Things (IoT), artificial intelligence, machine learning, blockchain, digital assistants and advances in the human interface and how users interact with Oracle Cloud SaaS offerings within a business context or to augment human capabilities to enhance productivity. Oracle Applications Licenses Customers have the ability to license Oracle Applications, including Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards and Siebel applications, among others, for use within the Oracle Cloud or within their own cloud-based or on-premise IT environments. These licensed applications are designed to manage and automate core business functions across the enterprise, including HCM, ERP, EPM, SCM, Customer Experience, and industry-specific applications, among others. The company provides customers the option to purchase license support contracts in connection with the purchase of Oracle Applications licenses. Oracle License Support Oracle license support offerings are marketed and sold as a part of the company’s cloud and license business. Substantially all of the company’s customers opt to purchase license support contracts when they purchase Oracle applications and infrastructure licenses to run within the Oracle Cloud or other cloud-based and on-premise IT environments. The company licenses support offerings protect and enhance its customers’ investments in Oracle applications and infrastructure technologies because they provide proactive and personalized support services, including Oracle Lifetime Support and unspecified license enhancements and upgrades during the term of the support period. Substantially all license support customers renew their support contracts with it upon expiration in order to continue to benefit from technical support services and the periodic issuance of unspecified updates and enhancements, which current license support customers are entitled to receive. The company’s license support contracts are generally priced as a percentage of the net fees paid by the customer to purchase the license, are typically one year in duration and are generally billed to the customer annually in advance. Oracle Infrastructure Technologies Oracle infrastructure technologies are marketed, sold and delivered through its cloud and license business and through the company’s hardware business. The company’s infrastructure technologies are designed to be flexible, cost-effective, standards-based, secure and high-performance in order to facilitate the development, running, integration, management and extension across an organization’s cloud-based, on-premise and hybrid IT environments. The company’s cloud and license business’ infrastructure technologies include the Oracle Database, which is the world’s most popular enterprise database; Java, which is the computer industry’s most widely-used software development language; and middleware, including development tools, among others. These infrastructure technologies are available through a subscription to its OCI offerings or through the purchase of a license and related license support, at the customer’s option, to run within the Oracle Cloud, as a part of a customer’s on-premise cloud services, and in other customer IT environments. The company’s OCI offerings also include cloud-based compute, storage and networking capabilities, among others, and new and innovative services, such as Oracle Autonomous Database, MySQL HeatWave and emerging technologies, such as IoT, digital assistant, and blockchain. The company’s hardware business’ infrastructure technologies consist of hardware products and certain unique hardware-related software offerings and include Oracle Engineered Systems, enterprise servers, storage solutions, industry-specific hardware, virtualization software, operating systems, management software, and related hardware services, including hardware support at the customer’s option. The company’s customers utilize Oracle hardware products and related offerings in their cloud-based, on-premise or hybrid environments to run their internal business operations and to deliver products and services to their customers. The company designs its infrastructure technologies to work in its customers’ on-premise IT environments that may include other Oracle or non-Oracle hardware or software components. The company’s flexible and open approach also provides Oracle customers with a choice as to how they can utilize and deploy Oracle infrastructure technologies: through the use of Oracle Cloud offerings; on-premise in its customers’ data centers; or a hybrid combination of these two deployment models, such as in the Oracle Cloud@Customer deployment model. The company focuses on the operation and integration of Oracle infrastructure technologies to make them easier to deploy, extend, interconnect, manage and maintain for its customers and to improve computing performance relative to its competitors’ offerings. For example, the Oracle Exadata Database Machine integrates multiple Oracle technology components to work together to deliver improved performance, availability, scalability, security and operational efficiency of Oracle Database workloads relative to its competitors’ products. Oracle Infrastructure Technologies – Cloud and License Business Offerings Oracle infrastructure technologies are marketed, sold and delivered through the company’s cloud and license business. The company’s infrastructure cloud services and license support revenues represented 58% of its total cloud services and license support revenues during fiscal 2022. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) OCI offerings are based upon Oracle’s Next-Generation Cloud Infrastructure and are designed to deliver the company’s infrastructure technologies as a service, including compute, storage and networking services. OCI offerings include the company’s Oracle Autonomous Database offerings, among others that Oracle runs, manages, upgrades and supports on behalf of the customer. The company typically charges a prepaid fee that is decremented as the OCI services are consumed by the customer over a stated time period. By utilizing OCI, customers can leverage the Oracle Cloud for enterprise-grade, high performance, scalable, cost-effective and secure infrastructure technologies that are designed to be rapidly deployable and provide real-time elasticity while reducing the amount of time and resources normally consumed by IT processes within on-premise environments. OCI is designed to be differentiated from other cloud vendors to provide better security by separating cloud control code computers from customer data compute nodes. Customers use OCI to build and operate new cloud-native applications, to run new workloads and to move their existing Oracle or non-Oracle workloads to the Oracle Cloud from their on-premise data centers or from other cloud-based IT environments, among other uses. The company continues to invest in OCI to improve features and performance; to expand the catalog of cloud-based infrastructure tools and services that it provides; to increase the capacity and geographic footprint to deliver these services; to simplify the processes for migrating workloads to the Oracle Cloud; and to provide customers with the ability to run workloads across different IT environments, the Oracle Cloud, as well as other third-party clouds in a hybrid deployment model. Oracle customers and partners utilize OCI offerings for platform-related services that are based upon the Oracle Database, Java and Oracle Middleware, including open source and other tools for a variety of use cases across data management (including the use of Oracle Autonomous Database and MySQL HeatWave), applications development, integration, content management, analytics, IT management and governance, security, and rapidly emerging technologies, such as machine learning. OCI machine learning features are designed to be embedded into customer applications for a variety of predictive use cases, including among others, the servicing of machine parts that are at risk of failing, the stocking of retailer store shelves, and the financial modeling to stay within a business’ forecasts. Oracle customers and partners also utilize OCI offerings for highly-scalable, available, and secure compute, storage and networking services. OCI compute services range from virtual machines to graphics processing unit-based offerings to bare metal servers and include options for dense I/O workloads and high performance computing. OCI storage offerings include block, object and archive storage services. In addition, the company’s OCI offerings include networking, connectivity, and edge services that help connect customer data centers and third-party clouds, such as Microsoft Azure, with its OCI services for the creation of distributed and multi-cloud architectures. In addition to the full suite of OCI offerings delivered by dozens of Oracle public cloud regions across the globe, the company provides its customers with flexibility by offering certain OCI services within a customer’s own data center to address customer latency requirements and address restrictions imposed upon customers that operate in certain regulated industries, entities or jurisdictions. Oracle Cloud@Customer is designed to enable customers to run Oracle Autonomous Database or Oracle Database in their own data centers behind their firewalls while having the services managed by Oracle. Oracle Dedicated Region Cloud@Customer is designed to enable customers to bring a self-contained OCI instance into their data centers while accessing a substantial portfolio of OCI and Oracle SaaS offerings. Oracle Roving Edge Infrastructure offerings are designed to enable customers to access cloud computing and storage services at the edge of networks and in generally disconnected locations in order to accelerate deployment of cloud workloads outside of the data center. Oracle Database Licenses Oracle Database is the world’s most popular enterprise database and is designed to enable reliable and secure storage, retrieval and manipulation of all forms of data. Oracle Database is licensed throughout the world by businesses and organizations of all sizes for a multitude of purposes, including among others: for use within the Oracle Cloud to deliver the company’s Oracle SaaS and OCI offerings; for use as a cloud license by a number of cloud-based vendors as a component of their respective cloud offerings; for packaged and custom applications for transaction processing; and for data warehousing and business intelligence. Oracle Database may be deployed in various IT environments, including Oracle Cloud, Oracle Cloud@Customer and Dedicated Region Cloud@Customer environments, other cloud-based IT environments, and on-premise data centers, among others. Oracle Database Enterprise Edition is available with a number of optional add-on products to address specific customer requirements. Customers may elect to purchase license support for Oracle Database licenses. The company also offers Oracle Database as a cloud service, such as with OCI’s Exadata Cloud Service and Database Cloud Service. In addition to the Oracle Database, the company offers a portfolio of specialized databases to address specific customer requirements, including MySQL, the world’s most popular open source database, as a cloud service and an on-premise offering. Oracle Autonomous Database Oracle Autonomous Database is designed to deliver performance and scale for enterprise database workloads with automated database operations and policy-driven optimization by combining certain Oracle infrastructure technologies, including the Oracle Database, Oracle’s Next-Generation Cloud Infrastructure, Oracle Exadata, and native machine learning capabilities, among others. Oracle Autonomous Database is designed to be self-driving, automating routine database administration tasks, including maintenance, tuning, patching, security and backup. Oracle Autonomous Database is engineered to lower labor costs and reduce human error while using machine learning-driven diagnostics for fault prediction and error handling and is also engineered to provide automatic threat detection and remediation. Oracle Autonomous Database is designed to enable on-demand, automatic scaling of database resources combined with consumption-based pricing in order to help organizations lower costs by paying only for resources used. The integration of Oracle Autonomous Database with other Oracle Cloud Services, such as Java Cloud and the Oracle APEX low-code service, along with open interfaces and integrations, is designed to provide developers with a modern, open platform to develop new and innovative applications. For analytics workloads, Oracle Autonomous Database is designed to provide customers with easy-to-use analytics tools and machine learning capabilities that are accelerated using Oracle Exadata’s scale-out infrastructure. Oracle Autonomous Database’s built-in developer capabilities and automation will enable organizations to quickly deploy new data marts and data warehouses; move existing ones to the cloud; and create data lake houses. All of which is designed to enable organizations to gain new insights into customer behavior, more accurately anticipate future demand, align workforce deployment with business activity forecasts and accelerate the pace of operations, among other benefits. For transaction processing workloads, Oracle Autonomous Database is designed to enable organizations to safely run a complex mix of high-performance transactions. It is also designed to enable organizations to efficiently support dynamic workloads, conduct real-time analysis of transactional data and lower administration costs. Oracle Autonomous Database offers the following options, among others: Shared Exadata Cloud Infrastructure, which is designed to provide a simple and elastic deployment choice in OCI regions where Oracle autonomously operates all aspects of the database lifecycle, including database placement, backup and software updates; Dedicated Exadata Cloud Infrastructure, which is designed to provide dedicated compute, storage, networking and database resources for a single tenant in OCI regions, enabling high levels of security isolation and governance, customizable operational policies for autonomous operations, workload placement and optimization, availability, over-provisioning and peak usage; and Exadata Cloud@Customer Infrastructure, which is designed to be deployed in customer data centers to provide the characteristics of a private, on-premise cloud but with cloud automation, consumption pricing, and Oracle management of the infrastructure and software. Oracle Middleware Licenses The company licenses its Oracle Middleware, which is a broad family of integrated application infrastructure software, for use in the Oracle Cloud, other cloud-based environments, on-premise data centers and related IT environments. Oracle Middleware is designed to enable customers to design and integrate Oracle and non-Oracle business applications, automate business processes, scale applications to meet customer demand, simplify security and compliance, manage lifecycles of documents and get actionable, targeted business intelligence. Built with Oracle’s Java technology platform, Oracle Middleware products are designed to be flexible across different deployment environments—cloud, on-premise or hybrid—as a foundation for custom, packaged and composite applications, thereby simplifying and reducing time to deployment. Oracle Middleware is designed to protect customers’ IT investments and work with both Oracle and non-Oracle database, middleware and applications software through an open architecture and adherence to industry standards. In addition, Oracle Middleware supports multiple development languages and tools, which enables developers to flexibly build once and deploy applications globally across websites, portals and cloud-based applications utilizing a variety of IT environments. Among its other middleware license offerings, the company licenses development tools, such as Oracle WebLogic Server for Java application development; and Oracle Identity Manager, which automates user identity provisioning and allows enterprises to manage the end-to-end lifecycle of user identities across all enterprise resources. Organizations may elect to purchase license support for Oracle Middleware licenses at their option. The company also offers certain of its middleware capabilities as a part of its OCI offerings. Java Licenses Java is the world’s most popular programming language that is used to deliver cloud development and deployment services, microservices, analytics, data management, blockchain, security, and continuous integration tools for numerous platforms and technologies, including websites, enterprise and consumer applications, embedded devices and large-scale systems. Java is designed to enable developers to write software on a single platform and run it on many other different platforms, independent of operating system and hardware architecture. Java has been adopted by both independent software vendors (ISVs) that have built their products using Java and by enterprise organizations building custom applications or consuming Java-based ISV products. Oracle is the steward of the Java platform and ecosystem. Customers generally purchase Java offerings through subscriptions that include licenses and support services. Oracle’s Java offerings are used by customers to support their Java deployments and to stay with the latest security updates and other technology innovations. Oracle Infrastructure Technologies – Hardware Business Offerings Oracle infrastructure technologies are also marketed, sold and delivered through the company’s hardware business, including a broad selection of hardware products and related hardware support services to power cloud-based and on-premise IT environments. Oracle Engineered Systems Oracle Engineered Systems are core to the company’s cloud-based and on-premise data center infrastructure offerings. Oracle Engineered Systems are pre-integrated products, combining multiple unique Oracle technology components, including database, storage, operating system, and management software with server, storage, networking hardware and other technologies. Oracle Engineered Systems are designed to work together to deliver improved performance, scalability, availability, security and operational efficiency relative to its competitors’ products; to be upgraded effectively and efficiently in a non-disruptive manner; and to simplify maintenance cycles and improve security by providing a single solution for patching. For example, Oracle Exadata Database Machine is an integrated platform that is optimized for running Oracle Database, achieving higher performance, scalability and availability by combining Oracle Database, storage and operating system software with Oracle server, storage and networking hardware. The company offers certain of its Oracle Engineered Systems, including the Oracle Exadata Database Machine, among others, through flexible deployment options, including on-premise, as a cloud offering in OCI, and as a hybrid cloud offering in customer data centers. Oracle Servers The company offers a wide range of Oracle server products that are designed for mission-critical enterprise environments and that are key components of its Oracle Engineered Systems and Oracle Cloud offerings. The company has two families of server products: those based on the Oracle SPARC microprocessor, which are designed to be differentiated by their reliability, security and scalability specifically for UNIX environments; and those using x86 microprocessors. By offering a range of server sizes and microprocessors, customers are offered the flexibility to choose the types of servers that will be most appropriate and valuable for their particular IT environments. Oracle Storage Oracle storage products are engineered for cloud, on-premise and hybrid IT environments and designed to securely store, manage, protect and archive customers’ mission-critical data assets generated by any database or application. Oracle storage products combine flash, disk, tape and server technologies with optimized software and unique integrations with the Oracle Database offering greater performance and efficiency and lower total cost relative to its competitors’ storage products. Certain of the company’s storage products provide integration with Oracle Cloud Services for backup and archiving. Oracle Industry-Specific Hardware Offerings The company offers hardware products and services designed for certain specific industries, including among others, its point-of-sale terminals and related hardware that are designed for managing businesses within the food and beverage, hotel and retail industries; and hardware products and services for communications networks, including network signaling, policy control and subscriber data management solutions, and session border control technology. Oracle Operating Systems, Virtualization, Management and Other Hardware-Related Software The company offers a portfolio of operating systems, including Oracle Linux and Oracle Solaris, virtualization software, and other hardware-related software. The company also offers a range of management technologies and products, including Oracle Enterprise Manager and the Oracle Cloud Observability and Management Platform, designed to help customers efficiently operate complex IT environments, including both end users’ and service providers’ cloud environments. Oracle Hardware Support Oracle hardware support offerings provide customers with unspecified software updates for software components that are essential to the functionality of the company’s hardware products, such as for Oracle operating systems and firmware. These offerings can also include product repairs, maintenance services and technical support services. The company continues to evolve hardware support processes that are intended to proactively identify and solve quality issues and to increase the amount of new and renewed hardware support contracts sold in connection with the sale of its hardware products. Hardware support contracts are generally priced as a percentage of the net hardware products fees. Oracle Services The company offers services to help customers and partners maximize the performance of their investments in Oracle applications and infrastructure technologies. The company’s services offerings substantially include among others consulting services, which are designed to help its customers and global system integrator partners more successfully architect and deploy its cloud and license offerings, including IT strategy alignment, enterprise architecture planning and design, implementation, integration, application development, security assessments and ongoing software enhancements and upgrades. The company utilizes a global, blended delivery model to optimize value for its customers and partners, consisting of consultants from local geographies, industry specialists and consultants from its global delivery and solution centers; and advanced customer services, which are support services provided by Oracle to a customer on-site or remote to enable increased performance and higher availability of a customer’s Oracle products and services. Oracle Cloud Operations Oracle Cloud Operations deliver the company’s Oracle Cloud Services to customers through a secure, reliable, scalable, enterprise grade cloud infrastructure platform managed by Oracle employees within a global network of data centers, which it refers to as the Oracle Cloud. The Oracle Cloud enables secure and isolated cloud-based instances for each of the company’s customers to access the functionality of Oracle Cloud Services via a broad spectrum of devices. Oracle Cloud Operations leverage automated software tools to enable the rapid delivery of the latest cloud technology capabilities to the Oracle Cloud as they become available, providing Oracle customers access to the latest Oracle releases generally on a quarterly cadence. The company has invested in the expansion of the Oracle Cloud by increasing existing data center capacity and adding additional data centers in new geographic locations to meet current and expected customer demand. Sales and Marketing The company directly markets and sells its cloud, license, hardware, support and services offerings globally to businesses of many sizes and in many industries, government agencies, and educational institutions. The company also markets and sells its offerings globally through indirect channels. In the United States (U.S.), the company’s sales and services employees are based in its headquarters and other facilities throughout the country. Outside the U.S., the company’s international subsidiaries sell, support and service its offerings in their local countries, as well as within other foreign countries where it does not operate through a direct sales subsidiary. The company’s geographic coverage allows it to draw on business and technical expertise from a global workforce, provides stability to its operations and revenue streams to offset geography specific economic trends, and offers it an opportunity to take advantage of new markets for its offerings. The company also markets its product offerings worldwide through indirect channels. The companies that comprise the company’s indirect channel network are members of the Oracle Partner Network. The Oracle Partner Network is a global program that manages the company’s business relationships with a large, broad-based network of companies, including cloud and license, hardware and services suppliers, system integrators and resellers that deliver innovative solutions and services based upon and in conjunction with its product offerings. By offering its partners access to the company’s product offerings, educational information, technical services, marketing and sales support, the Oracle Partner Network program extends its market reach by providing its partners with the resources they need to be successful in delivering solutions to customers globally. Seasonality The company’s quarterly revenues have historically been affected by a variety of seasonal factors, including the structure of its sales force incentive compensation plans, which are common in the IT industry. In each fiscal year, the company’s total revenues and operating margins are typically highest in its fourth fiscal quarter (year ended May 31, 2022) and lowest in its first fiscal quarter. Research and Development For the year ended May 31, 2022, the company invested $7.2 billion in research and development to enhance its existing portfolio of offerings and to develop new technologies and services. Competition The company’s enterprise cloud, license and hardware offerings compete directly with certain offerings from some of the largest and most competitive companies in the world, including Amazon.com, Inc.; Microsoft Corporation; International Business Machines Corporation (IBM); Intel Corporation; Cisco Systems, Inc.; Adobe Systems Incorporated; Alphabet Inc.; salesforce.com, inc.; and SAP SE. The company also competes with other companies like Hewlett-Packard Enterprise and Workday, Inc. History Oracle Corporation was founded in 1977. The company was incorporated in 2005 as a Delaware corporation.