Oracle reported quarterly earnings well below expectation, prompting many to repeat Marc Andreessen’s recent suggestion that big enterprise software companies were faced with a ticking clock. Hardware sales were way down – 14% – with software licenses showing only modest – 2% – growth. Revenue also grew to $8.8billion, and the company made a profit of 54 cents per share. But analysts had expected more. Arik Hesseldahl offers more analysis, and points to some of the mitigating factors behind these figures. The numbers may have disappointed analysts, but they’re not dreadful. As I seem to be saying an awful lot at the moment, it would be unwise to discount these big incumbents too soon. Yes, some of them will fail. But Oracle’s not dead yet.