NetSuite and Salesforce.com pioneered cloud software, being formed in the late 1990s, but "that was a while ago," Ellison said. "They built multitenacy into the application layer because they had no choice."

Fusion, in contrast, is "extremely modern," Ellison said.

Ellison wrapped up his speech with a discussion of Oracle's Social Relationship Management product family.

"There's a lot more data out there than there used to be, and all that data properly processed will give you business insights about your customers, business insights about your products," he said.

Ellison described how Oracle's social technologies could detect customer discontent or confusion on a social network and then help companies quickly respond to specific customers. To improve its hand in this area, Oracle has made a number of acquisitions, including Collective Intellect and Involver.