Oracle brought a user of its E-Business Suite, Giovanni Contino, CEO and partner of Ducati Consulting, onstage. The company was spun out of the Ducati motorcycle builder. Ducati was looking for efficiency in its IT, Contino said. "We wanted to have software which wouldn't bring us into an alleyway. We wanted to have software which was perfectly suitable with the work we were already doing and E-Business Suite was just the perfect tool for us," he said.

PeopleSoft, for its part, is being fitted with vertical functionality for areas such as higher education and financial services.

JD Edwards, meanwhile, is getting its first major functional release since 1998. "This is a very passionate group of customers," said Wookey. Oracle is planning the JD Edwards World A9.1 release of the platform.

For Siebel, modular functionality will be added to the on-demand version of the platform.

Oracle with its applications is focused on enterprise secure search, Wookey said. "Search is becoming one of the new metaphors for how people navigate through their work," he said.