Hurd went on to say that Oracle is partnering with ISVs and others who will build on top of the Oracle Cloud through platform- and infrastructure-as-a-service offerings, and that Oracle's Exadata and Exalogic systems will be at the heart of others' cloud services. "We're more than open to partners leveraging our cloud," Hurd says.

Oracle's challenge remains distributing its technologies more widely, putting them into the hands of existing and new customers who need them. Ellison has committed to pumping about $5 billion into R&D this year, and on top of technologies obtained via acquisitions, that will only mean Oracle's portfolio will expand.

"We're building a tremendous stack of capabilities. We just have to make sure they get in front of all the buyers," Hurd says.