Staff doubled this year to nearly 700, with key hires from Oracle, Google and Salesforce.

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The solid IBM results follow similarly solid recent results from other key IT players like Oracle (ORCL) and Accenture (ACN).

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"We can say a number of key allegations made by Oracle and examined by us appear to be unfounded, " Kagermann said, even as he expressed his "regret" over the matter.

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