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Oracle will roll out cloudy services next week – Ellison

Larry says he likes the cloud now

Oracle is planning to launch a new suite of cloud software products and services in the first week of June, billionaire chief exec Larry Ellison said.

"We’re announcing the general availability of the Oracle Cloud: Platform as a Service, Database Service, Java Service and a bunch of applications," Ellison said during an onstage interview at an All Things D conference (transcript here). "[It will be a] complex ERP and HR suite in the cloud – all running on Oracle hardware, and running in their own virtual machine."

That virtual machine bit is a bit of a dig at Salesforce.com, which runs a system where customers are on the same VM, instead of having their very own piece of cloud.

"When you're a multi-tenant customer, you get the new upgrade when the vendor tells you. When you run your own VM, you have more control," Ellison said.

Despite, or maybe because of, the fact that Ellison was an early investor in Salesforce.com, the firms' personality-heavy chiefs often clash. Most recently, the two had a little spat over Oracle cancelling Marc Benioff's slot at the OpenWorld conference and giving him a less than desirable time slot on the last day instead.

Oracle claimed it was a scheduling necessity, but Benioff took to Twitter to retweet criticisms of Ellison's keynote at the conference and tell attendees to come hear him speak at the hotel across the road from the conference.

Some may have thought that Oracle would never go into the cloud, particularly since Ellison once called the concept "complete gibberish", but he now says that it was the terminology he had objected to.

Ellison said that moving complex networks off desktops has been "recast" as cloud computing, which he argues was around already.

"I objected to people saying, "Oh my God, I just invented cloud computing," he said, adding that he now thinks it's "a charismatic brand".

Ellison is expected to provide more details of his cloudy offerings at an event for customers and analysts at Oracle's Redwood HQ on 6 June. ®

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