A Collision Course in the Cloud

It's not just that Marc Benioff and Larry Ellison can't share the stage -- to all appearances, their companies can't share the cloud either. Deep down, Oracle and Salesforce are heading to the same destination, said Muneer Taskar, head of Persistent's cloud computing practice, however they are coming from in contrast directions -- with completely different features just in case.

The two sides appear more than eager to give their spin on the keynote kerfuffle to any and all who will listen -- even though neither company was able to produce a spokesperson to talk to the E-Commerce Times about its cloud computing services for this story.

Its cloud offering, which runs on Oracle systems, as well includes Oracle Fusion CRM, HCM, Social Network, Java and Oracle Database Cloud service. All things considered, it offers several different business applications via the cloud.

The advantages

Other considerations that prospective users should factor in are the advantages and disadvantages of using a Java-based system versus a proprietary one, said Wettemann, and whether a company will need the myriad business applications Oracle has available.

Oracle is as well pushing its hybrid approach to computing -- in other words, the ability to move users and workloads from the enterprise to the cloud and back seamlessly, noted Muneer Taskar, head of Persistent's cloud computing practice.

"When [you] look at Oracle, you have hundreds of different modules for all areas of the business. Salesforce.com is more CRM and custom-app focused," Wettemann observed.

"That makes sense for enterprises that already have Oracle products installed. Salesforce has focused on the social enterprise and has the framework built in for feeds, sharing, collaboration and APIs to enable consumption via external app. Oracle has but to elaborate on social networking support."

"The innovation Oracle is moving to the cloud is already proven," he maintained, "and more importantly, widely entrenched. Not having to learn, or do, anything new or proprietary is a powerful pro in enterprise IT decision making, and this will work in Oracle's favor."