Welcome to the annual meeting for Oracle Corporation. Our host for today's call is Jeff Henley, Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors. At this time, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. I will now turn the call over to your host. Mr. Henley, you may begin, sir.
Thank you. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Jeff Henley, Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors. Along with my fellow directors and executive officers of Oracle, I would like to welcome you to our annual meeting of stockholders. In accordance with the notice of the meeting, I call to order the 45th annual meeting of stockholders of Oracle Corporation. I will first conduct the formal portion of the shareholders meeting in accordance with the agenda you see on your screen. Following the adjournment of the formal portion, there will be an opportunity for us to answer stockholder questions. Some of you have already submitted a question. If you submit a question at any time during this meeting in the space provided on the virtual meeting screen, we ask that you please identify yourself. As a reminder, this meeting is being recorded.
Before proceeding to the business of the meeting, I'd like to introduce myself and other directors, all of whom are standing for election and are joining us remotely today. As I mentioned, my name is Jeff Henley. I've been a director since 1995 and vice chairman since 2014. Prior to that, I served as chairman. I was also previously Oracle's chief financial officer from 1991 to 2004. Larry Ellison was appointed chairman of the board and as chief technology officer in 2004. Previously, Mr. Ellison was our CEO and has been a director since he founded Oracle in 1977. Safra Catz has been a director since 2001 and was appointed CEO of Oracle in 2014. Prior to that, Ms. Catz served as president and chief financial officer.
Dr. Michael Boskin has been a director since 1994. Dr. Boskin is the Tully M. Friedman Professor of Economics and Wohlford Family Hoover Institution Senior Fellow at Stanford University. Jeff Berg has been a director since 1997. He is chairman of Northside Services, a media and entertainment advisory firm. Mr. Berg was previously chairman and CEO of International Creative Management. Naomi Seligman has been a director since 2005. She's a senior partner at Ostriker von Simson, a technology research firm that chairs the CIO Strategy Exchange. George Conrades has been a director since 2008. He is an executive advisor to Akamai Technologies and previously served as Akamai's chairman and CEO.
Bruce Chizen has been a director since 2008. He's an independent consultant and serves as a senior advisor and partner to Permira Advisors and as a venture partner at Voyager Capital. He previously served as CEO of Adobe Inc. Secretary Leon Panetta has been a director since 2015. Secretary Panetta previously served as the U.S. Secretary of Defense and as director of the Central Intelligence Agency. He is the co-founder and chairman of Panetta Institute for Public Policy. Renée James has been a director since 2015. She is the chairman and CEO of Ampere Computing, a producer of high-performance semiconductors for hyperscale cloud storage and edge computing. She's also an operating executive at The Carlyle Group. She previously served as president of Intel Corporation.
Charles (Wick) Moorman IV has been a director since 2018. He's currently a senior advisor to Amtrak and previously served as Amtrak's president and CEO. He also previously served as chairman and CEO of Norfolk Southern Corporation. Bill Parrett has been a director since 2018. He previously served as the CEO of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu. Rona Fairhead has been a director since 2019. She previously served as Minister of State for Trade and Export Promotion in the Department for International Trade in the United Kingdom, and prior to that, she served as the chair of the BBC Trust. Vishal Sikka has been a director since 2019. He is the CEO of Vianai Systems, a startup company that provides advanced software and services in artificial intelligence and machine learning. Awo Ablo joined the board, excuse me, in 2022.
She's the executive director of external relations at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. Also present in this meeting is Brian Higgins, Oracle's senior vice president and corporate secretary. We are also joined here today by representatives from Ernst & Young, our independent auditors. They'll be available during the question and answer session after the formal meeting to respond to appropriate questions. Finally, Oracle has appointed Broadridge Financial Solutions to act as inspector of elections. Katherine B. Blackburn, representing Broadridge, is with us today and has taken the oath of the inspector of elections. The minutes of last year's annual meeting are available, and any stockholder wishing to inspect the minutes should contact our corporate secretary. Now let's move on to the formal portion of the meeting. Brian Higgins will report on the mailing of the notice of this meeting.
Thanks, Jeff. This meeting is held pursuant to a notice dated September twenty-third, twenty twenty-two.
I have an affidavit of distribution from Broadridge Financial Solutions certifying as to the giving of notice of this meeting and the sending of the proxy materials to stockholders of record as of September 19, 2022. All of which Broadridge commenced distributing to stockholders on September 23, 2022. I also have a copy of the 2022 annual report, which includes financial statements certified by Ernst & Young. A copy of this annual report was sent or made available to each stockholder entitled to vote at this meeting, and an electronic copy of the annual report is available on the website used to access this meeting. I also have the list of the holders of record of common stock of the company at the close of business on September 19, 2022.
This list of stockholders has been open for examination for any purpose relevant to this meeting for the past 10 days. This list is available for inspection during this meeting by any stockholder on the website used to access the meeting. All documents concerning notice of the meeting, including proof of mailing, will be filed with the minutes of this meeting, and this meeting is being held in accordance with Oracle's bylaws and Delaware law. A copy of the rules of conduct that govern today's meeting can be found in the meeting materials section of the web portal for this virtual meeting. We ask that you abide by these rules in order to facilitate an orderly meeting.
Okay, Brian will now advise whether a quorum is present at the meeting and canvass the stockholders present. Those stockholders who have returned proxies have authorized the persons identified in the proxies to vote on the proposals coming before the meeting.
On the record date, there were 2,696,116,315 shares of Oracle's common stock issued, outstanding, and entitled to vote at this meeting. I have been informed by the Inspector of Elections that a majority of these shares is present in person or by proxy, and therefore a quorum necessary to transact business is present. It is now approximately 1:10 Central Time and the polls are open but will close shortly. All Oracle stockholders entitled to vote at this meeting have the ability to do so online. If you are a stockholder entitled to vote and have not yet voted, or if you want to change your previously cast vote, please do so now. Please remember that if you have already voted by proxy, it is not necessary to vote again.
Once we complete the formal portion of the meeting, we will close the polls.
Thank you. I declare a quorum is present at this meeting. On behalf of Oracle's board, I would like to express my appreciation to all stockholders who return their proxies or submit ballots. There are three management proposals on the agenda for this year's meeting. All voting results announced today are preliminary. Final totals for each of the proposals voted upon today will be made publicly available on a Form 8-K within four business days. Okay, the first matter of business is the election of 15 directors to serve until the next annual meeting of stockholders. The nominees recommended by the board of directors are Larry Ellison, Jeff Henley, Safra Catz, Michael Boskin, Jeff Berg, Naomi Seligman, George Conrades, Bruce Chizen, Leon Panetta, Renée James, Wick Moorman, Bill Parrett, Rona Fairhead, Vishal Sikka, and Awo Ablo.
Additional information about each of the nominees can be found on pages 10 through 14 on Oracle's proxy statement. The next item of business is the non-binding advisory vote by stockholders on the compensation paid to Oracle's named executive officers as disclosed in Oracle's proxy statement filed in connection with this meeting. This is commonly referred to as say on pay vote. The final matter is the ratification of the appointment of Ernst & Young LLP as Oracle's independent registered public accounting firm by the Finance and Audit Committee of the Board of Directors. The Board of Directors recommends the ratification of the appointment of Ernst & Young as our independent registered public accounting firm for the fiscal year 2023. The polls will close shortly. If you intend to vote, you need to do so now.
It is 1:12 Central Time. The polls are now closed. We will now announce the preliminary voting results. Will the secretary please announce the results of the vote to elect 15 directors to serve until the next annual meeting of shareholders?
Each nominee for election to the board of directors has received the affirmative vote of a majority of Oracle shares of common stock present and entitled to vote at this meeting.
I declare that all the nominees for director have been duly elected. Next, will the secretary please indicate the results of the say on pay vote?
This proposal also received the affirmative vote of a majority of Oracle's shares of common stock present and entitled to vote at this meeting.
Thank you. The say on pay proposal has been approved. Finally, the secretary will please announce the results of the vote to ratify appointment of Ernst & Young LLP as Oracle's independent registered public accounting firm for fiscal year 2023.
This proposal received the affirmative vote of a majority of Oracle shares of common stock present and entitled to vote at this meeting.
Okay. The appointment of Ernst & Young as Oracle's independent registered public accounting firm for fiscal year 2023 has been duly ratified. This confirms the formal part of this meeting, which is now adjourned. We are now at the part of the meeting providing for general questions and discussions. If you have a question regarding Oracle and its business, please follow the instructions provided on the virtual meeting screen. We ask that you please identify yourself when submitting the question. Please note that our answers to stockholder questions may include expectations, predictions, estimates, or other information that might be considered forward-looking. While these forward-looking statements represent our current judgment on what the future holds, they're subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially.
You should review our most recent 10-K or Form 10-K and Form 10-Q for a discussion of risks that may affect our future results or the market price of our stock. You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements which reflect our opinions only as of today. Please keep in mind that we're not obligating ourselves to update these forward-looking statements in light of new information or future events.
Though we may not be able to answer every question, we will endeavor to answer as many questions as time permits, as long as such questions comply with the meeting rules of conduct and are germane to Oracle's business. With that, the first question, Larry, what do you think the most important development in cloud computing is, and how is Oracle addressing it?
Well, as cloud computing continues to evolve, I think the most important thing that's new is the interconnection of the major clouds. That the clouds, while they began as walled gardens where AWS didn't talk to Azure, Microsoft Azure didn't talk to Google, didn't talk to Oracle. The clouds were not interconnected. Oracle and Microsoft made a fundamental architectural decision to interconnect our two clouds with a broadband, high-speed, low latency network connection. So that if you're in the Microsoft Azure cloud, you actually not only get all of Microsoft's services, you actually can go ahead and use Oracle services like the Oracle Relational Database or Oracle's new open source database called MySQL HeatWave.
We think this is gonna fundamentally change you know, the dynamic of consumers, where they will be able to choose the best service available in any of the major clouds and deploy a mixture of services from Microsoft and Oracle and eventually the other major cloud vendors. This notion of clouds being closed or walled gardens is changing, and clouds are becoming open, and customers are empowered to choose the service that best suits their needs.
Great. Thank you. A follow-up question to that was, on the earnings call, you've made reference to Oracle's cloud infrastructure being second generation. What does this mean and why is it important to stockholders?
Well, I think the key word here is autonomous. Our cloud, if you will, operates itself. You've read about clouds being victimized by security vulnerabilities, where one of the cloud users left a portal, basically, a door unlocked. They configured a database system or a storage system in such a way that other people could come along and access their data. It was simply a human error that, again, opened a security vulnerability and allowed for a bad actor to go ahead and take that customer's data. Take credit card numbers, all sorts of personal identifiers, and take it out of the cloud and store it and use it, and use that as a basis for credit fraud.
If you have autonomous systems, autonomous database, for example, then there is no human being configuring that system, that data storage system. The system configures itself. The system backs itself up. The system updates itself. It's all done automatically or, if you prefer, autonomously. It's a self-driving cloud. It's a self-driving database. With a self-driving car, there's no driver to speed or get into a or do something reckless or get into a crash or make a mistake. The same thing is true of Oracle's second-generation cloud. It is autonomous. It works automatically. Human beings, you, or you avoid the cost of human labor, but even more important, you eliminate the opportunity for human error. It's the only way you can have a secure and reliable cloud. That's the nature of Oracle's second-generation cloud.
Let me add one thing. Our hardware is even different than the other clouds. We actually have multiple computers running our cloud, whereby we can't see, we meaning Oracle people who run the cloud, we can't see any of your data, and we can't change any of your code, and you can't see the code that we use to manage our cloud. It's not in the same memory systems. Our computers are unique in the cloud in that they have separate processors and separate memories for our control code. It makes it very difficult, if not impossible, to hack into our cloud versus the other cloud.
Great. Thank you. A question for Safra. What caused revenue growth to accelerate last year, and can we expect that this will continue? A part of that is also, do we expect the war in the Ukraine to affect Oracle's results in any significant way?
Okay, it's actually not only last year, but even the year before. As we moved to the cloud, first, our cloud revenues, though were small, but were growing a lot. Our on-premise business stayed the same or even went down a bit. What happened at one point, our cloud business growth overwhelmed any decline in our on-premise business. That growth and that cloud business has gotten larger and larger. As it gets larger, since it is the fastest-growing part of our business, it becomes a larger percentage of our company. The entire business, as it gets bigger, the total revenue for the business actually grows even faster.
As for the war in Ukraine, for us, we had made a decision at the end of last February to stop our business in Russia and that has almost a half a billion-dollar impact on our company annually, and we've been still growing through that. We expect our business to continue to grow and in fact, for the growth rate to accelerate. That's the track we're on.
Great, thank you. That concludes the question and answer session, so I'll turn it back over to Jeff.
Okay. Ladies and gentlemen, thanks for attending today's meeting, and be well.
That concludes today's conference call. Thank you for joining, and have a pleasant day.