Oracle Corp.'s net income increased by 20 percent in the latest quarter as the company prospered from freer technology spending by corporations and the success story stood strong with Oracle's shares rising nearly by 5 percent.

Oracle hiring Hurd flared up the drama between Oracle and HP at a time when Oracle is all set to play in HP's arena by selling computer servers. That's a business Oracle picked up with the $7.30 billion acquisition earlier this year of Sun Microsystems. The Sun Microsystems deal has brought Oracle in a position to stand in line with its allies like IBM Corp. and Dell Inc., which also sell servers. The acquisition deal is definitely a part of the technology industry's consolidation process, being driven by big companies' desire to become better one-stop shops. Oracle is a leader because its software is ruling up there but largely hidden from the public's view.

Oracle's net income in the three months ended Aug. 31 was $1.35 billion, or 27 cents per share, versus $1.12 billion, or 22 cents per share, a year ago. Oracle's earnings came to 42 cents per share excluding one-time items, according to a Thomson Reuters poll. Revenue was $7.50 billion, a 48 percent improvement from last year and better than the $7.27 billion analysts expected.

Revenue from new software licenses rose 25 percent to $1.3 billion, better than Oracle's estimates. This increase implies that Oracle will earn more in the future from support contracts tied to those licenses. Oracle's hardware division, mostly made up of Sun's assets, raked in $1.70 billion in revenue.

Hurd in his first public statement as an Oracle employee, said that “Now at Oracle, he said the company will invest more than $4 billion in research and development this year.” That’s more than what Oracle spent last year estimated to be about $3.3 billion, but down if combined with the $1.6 billion that Sun spent in its last fiscal year. Reason to this lower combined total is that teams from Oracle and Sun were separately working on the same software projects, and areas of duplication have been eliminated as the organizations have been merged.

Analysts expect 45 cents per share, excluding items. Oracle sees net income of 44 cents to 46 cents per share, which is in line with Wall Street's analysis. Analysts expect revenue of $8.22 billion. Oracle says revenue should rise 38 percent to 43 percent over last year, a range of $8.08 billion to $8.38 billion. Oracle expects its revenue from new software licenses to rise 6 percent to 16 percent, translating to $1.80 billion to $1.97 billion.

Oracle is still left with $23.64 billion in cash and short-term investments at the end of the quarter, and added more than 650 workers, bringing the total employee strength to 105,236. Shares of Oracle, which is based in Redwood Shores, increased $1.16, or 4.6 percent, to $26.55 in extended trading Thursday after the release of results.