Higher software revenue helped lift Oracle Corp.’s (NYSE:ORCL) fiscal first-quarter net income by 8 percent.

The business software maker’s adjusted profit beat Wall Street predictions, while its revenue fell short. Oracle shares rose 33 cents, or 1 percent, to $34.20 in aftermarket trading.

For the quarter ended Aug. 31, the Redwood Shores, Calif., company earned $2.19 billion, or 47 cents per share, up from $2.03 billion, or 41 cents per share, in the same quarter last year.

Excluding costs of paying employees in stock and one-time items, the company posted a profit of 59 cent per share for the recent quarter.

Revenue increased 2 percent, to $8.37 billion from $8.18 billion.

Analysts, on average, expected a profit of 56 cents per share on $8.48 billion in revenue, according to FactSet.

Software revenue rose 6 percent to $6.08 billion and included a 5 percent increase in new software licenses and cloud software subscriptions to $1.65 billion.

Oracle President Mark Hurd said new software license sales were particularly strong in the Americas, where they rose 15 percent when excluding the effects of changes in exchange rates.

Hardware systems revenue fell 7 percent to $1.26 billion.

Despite growing revenue in the fiscal first quarter performance, the company’s forecast for earnings trailed analysts’ estimates, as rising competition in cloud computing restricts the company’s growth.

Profit, excluding some items, for the fiscal second quarter will be 64 cents to 69 cents a share, Chief Financial Officer Safra Catz said Wednesday on a conference call following Oracle’s earnings report. The company would have to reach the top end of that range to match analysts’ 69-cent average projection, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Chief Executive Officer Larry Ellison is coming off a year of stagnant sales growth as rivals Salesforce.com Inc. and Workday Inc. eat into the company’s revenue with Web-based products. Oracle, which is also a large supplier of computer hardware and business applications for human resources and financial management, faces the challenge of growing while converting customers to newer cloud-computing tools. The weaker- than-expected forecast follows two straight lackluster earnings reports.

“That’s a really fundamental issue the incumbents are having with this shift to software as a service,” said Pat Walravens, an analyst at JMP Securities LLC in San Francisco, who has a the equivalent of a hold rating on the shares. “It’s replacement revenue, it’s not new revenue,” he said. 

 (The Associated Press and Bloomberg News contributed to this report).