Oracle is quietly planning a cloud computing program

Oracle's overall strategy is an ambitious strategy that includes software (SaaS) and platform (PaaS) products, as well as social collaboration tools that take advantage of traditional database management systems that make Oracle one of the world's largest High-tech companies.

"They put a lot of money into cloud computing," said Paul Hamerman, a Forrester analyst at the 2012 Oracle industry analyst World Congress. ”

Oracle has been working on some of its plans publicly. At last year's Oracle Global Conference (Oracle OpenWorld), company founder and CEO Larry Ellison announced the Oracle public cloud, which incorporates applications and platform services, including in the areas of customer relationship management (CRM) and human Capital Management (HCM) , using the company's Fusion software product line. These products are already available, although database management, Java authoring, and social networking components are still limited to the preview version.

At this week's analyst meeting, Oracle revealed more detailed information about how the application will be used in the cloud. For example, according to some analysts (who have signed confidentiality agreements with Oracle to prevent them from revealing more details), Oracle has demonstrated an ipad application based on its fusion CRM product, supported by Oracle's public cloud.

Oracle hopes to break out in the highly competitive CRM market dominated by Salesforce and SAP, which took a 3.4 billion dollar share of the HCM sector after last year's successful takeover of SuccessFactors.

"Oracle believes they are the only providers of cloud infrastructure and cloud-based applications," said Alan Lepofsky, vice president and chief analyst at Constellation Research Group, which also provides infrastructure, But there are no applications, Oracle says, while SAP may have applications without infrastructure. Salesforce creates PAAs products through its force.com and Heroku products.

Hamerman says Oracle's SaaS strategy aims to target Oracle customers who want to switch to SaaS models, and new customers who want to choose CRM or HCM tools in the cloud, which can easily attract customers in the SaaS market because of the high level of popularity among corporate customers.

"For many customers, the SaaS model is a better choice," Hamerman says, "and it's a huge burden that the SaaS model makes it no longer necessary for the customer to fix and update the software." ”

Oracle announced significant progress in its HCM strategy earlier this year when Oracle Taleo a 1.9 billion dollar takeover of human resources cloud management tools.

Oracle is still accelerating customer popularity, but Oracle's president Mark Hurd says SaaS Apps have brought the company $1 billion worth of revenue.

"It's a bit late for them to enter the market, but there's still a lot of room for growth in the SaaS market," Hamerman said. "The market is still growing and big, so it's not too late for them to be involved." ”