Oracle's cloud also includes a central identity management system and a console based on Oracle's Enterprise Manager for "complete self-service," he said.

Kurian and another Oracle employee demonstrated how a system administrator could probe through and drill down into a graphical rendering of the Oracle cloud's topology, examining not only application performance and hardware metrics, but also business processes, such as how many marketing campaigns had been launched from a CRM (customer-relationship-management) application within the past day.

Ellison is expected to discuss the Oracle cloud's built-in social networking technology during a keynote later Tuesday, but Kurian also touched upon the topic briefly.

"If you've got happy customers, they spread the word about your products and services, and likewise if you've got unhappy customers," and social media allows this to happen at much greater scale than in the past, he said.

Oracle's social tools will allow users to engage with customers on social sites, analyze social data for business-related insights, and collaborate more effectively with fellow employees, he said.