Oracle earned $840M for the three months ended Aug. 31, a massive a 25% improvement from net income of $670M in the same period last year. That is the company's biggest increase in software sales since the dot-com bust.

Oracle shares have risen almost 30% for the year to date, increasing CEO Larry Ellison's personal wealth to an estimated $26 billion.

Ellison (pictured) takes the credit for having acquired some 30 companies as part and parcel of his strategy to put Oracle back in the front line of enterprise computing.

Safra Catz, Oracle's CFO, predicted Oracle's momentum will continue in the current quarter. She forecast the company's software sales will rise 15% to 25% in the three months ending in November.

"We reported new software license revenues up 35%, the strongest growth of any quarter in ten years," said Catz, "and that software sales growth is translating nicely into EPS growth. We've now completed thirteen quarters of our five year EPS growth plan of 20% per year, and we are delivering earnings growth well ahead of that target."

"We continue to take applications market share from SAP," said Oracle President, Charles Phillips. "In Q1 Oracle's applications new license sales grew 65% compared to SAP's new license sales growth rate of 18% in their most recently completed quarter. We like our growth strategy of expanding into high-end industry specific vertical software as opposed to SAP's growth strategy of moving down market to sell software to small companies."

"Our Q1 database and middleware new license sales growth rate of 23% was the highest in seven years," said Ellison. "Oracle passed IBM to become the number one database company a long time ago. If we continue to grow our middleware software business at the same rate we grew it this quarter, Oracle will challenge IBM for the number one position in middleware by the end of this year."

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