and a $306 million benefit relating to certain litigation (see Note 18 of Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report for additional information), both of which decreased our acquisition related and other expenses during this period.

Excluding the effect of foreign currency rate fluctuations, our operating margin increased during fiscal 2014 due to our revenues growth, while our operating margin as a percentage of revenues was flat.

 

Fiscal 2013 Compared to Fiscal 2012:     Excluding the effect of foreign currency rate fluctuations, our total revenues increased in fiscal 2013 due to an increase in our software and cloud business revenues. This constant currency increase was partially offset by reductions in our hardware systems and services business’ revenues. On a constant currency basis, the Americas region contributed 77% and the Asia Pacific region contributed 23% to our growth in total revenues during fiscal 2013.

Excluding the effect of foreign currency rate fluctuations, total operating expenses decreased in fiscal 2013 primarily due to a $387 million acquisition related benefit and a $306 million benefit related to certain litigation (both as noted above), lower hardware systems products costs associated with lower hardware systems products revenues, and certain other operating expense decreases in most of our other lines of business primarily due to lower variable compensation expenses, lower external contractor expenses and lower amortization of intangible assets. In constant currency, these total expense decreases during fiscal 2013 were partially offset by higher salary and benefit expenses due primarily to additional sales and marketing and research and development headcount added during fiscal 2013.

Excluding the effect of foreign currency rate fluctuations, our total operating margin and our total operating margin as a percentage of total revenues increased during fiscal 2013 due to the increase in our total revenues and the decrease in our total operating expenses.

Supplemental Disclosure Related to Certain Charges

To supplement our consolidated financial information, we believe the following information is helpful to an overall understanding of our past financial performance and prospects for the future. You should review the introduction under “Impact of Acquisitions” (above) for a discussion of the inherent limitations in comparing pre- and post-acquisition information.

Our operating results included the following business combination accounting adjustments and expenses related to acquisitions, as well as certain other significant expense and income items:

Software and Cloud Business

Our software and cloud business consists of our new software licenses and cloud software subscriptions segment, our cloud infrastructure-as-a-service segment and our software license updates and product support segment.

New Software Licenses and Cloud Software Subscriptions:     New software licenses revenues represent fees earned from granting customers licenses to use our database and middleware and our application software products. Cloud software subscriptions include revenues from our