Oracle continues to bolster cloud stack, starting at database level
SAN FRANCISCO---Once again taking over downtown San Francisco this week, newly-minted Oracle chief technology officer Larry Ellison opened the annual Oracle OpenWorld expo on Sunday.
As many analysts expected leading up to this weekend, Oracle put its cloud business into the spotlight first.
Ellison commenced by describing 2014 as a turning point for Oracle -- most especially its cloud business. He admitted that it "dawned on" him and the rest of Oracle a few years back that the hardware giant would need to deliver all three layers of cloud services.
OpenWorld 2019
"We had no choice. We had to deliver SaaS, PaaS and Infrastructure-as-a-Service together because of a promise we made to our customers 30 years ago," Ellison insisted.
At the SaaS layer, Ellison asserted Oracle has the largest portfolio in the industry, many of which were either developed in-house this year or brought in through acquisitions.
He further boasted that Oracle is the "only high-end level competitor to Salesforce.com," admitting they're "fighting it out" on various service applications.
"Salesforce.com is very good at helping you keep track of opportunities," Ellison remarked, touting that the difference with Oracle is that its service and marketing clouds "help engineer sales campaigns and provide reference databases and all the tools your salespeople need to go out and pursue new opportunties."
With that in mind, Oracle previously launched Field Services, comprised of 113 SaaS products with 14 new service cloud applications. Another new area for Oracle's cloud touches upon social campaigns and listening through its recently-launched Data-as-a-Service layer, consisting of 49 SaaS and DaaS products for the time being -- 36 of which are new this year.
Ellison preceded to list off dozens upon dozens of new cloud apps that have been trotted out in the last year, adding that the company has added more than 2,000 new SaaS customers in the last year as well.
"We are selling more core HCM than anybody. We are, for the first time, competing successfully with incumbent, Salesforce.com," Ellison said.
But the big changes unveiled at OpenWorld on Sunday are coming in where Oracle is most well-known: the database level.
Infographic via Oracle