Benioff took Ellison's ribbing in stride on his . "You can't buy this type of advertising. Thank you Larry," one message from Benioff states. "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery," he said in another.

The Oracle Public Cloud will be available through subscription pricing, Ellison said. It will offer instant provisioning and elastic capacity on demand.

Ellison's announcement had been predicted by some analysts, as IDG News Service last week.

Ellison did not reveal when the service will be available, but presumably the date is imminent or has already arrived, given that its marquee tenant, Fusion Applications, are now in general release after six years of development.

Fusion Applications are supposed to combine the best attributes of Oracle's various business software lines into a next-generation suite. The initial release includes some 100 modules. Fusion is differentiated from SAP, Salesforce.com, Workday and other applications by the fact it can be run either on-demand or on-premises, Ellison said.