This strategy, once again, shares many similarities with Salesforce.com's, underscoring a rivalry that has resulted in both companies making a series of similar acquisitions to boost their social software arsenals.

But Kurian took a different tack than Salesforce.com when discussing the Oracle SaaS (software-as-a-service) applications available through its cloud.

"We don't want our customers to have fragmented data and fragmented business processes because your ERP happens to be in one cloud, your HCM happens to be in another cloud," he said.

That may have been a subtle dig at Salesforce.com, which has ventured into some application areas outside of CRM but mostly seems to be building out a best-of-breed ERP (enterprise-resource-planning) suite via partnerships and integrations with the likes of Workday.

It was interesting to see, however, that Kurian's references to Oracle's cloud applications didn't focus strictly on its next-generation Fusion line, said Forrester Research analyst China Martens. "The customers talked about the Fusion Apps they were using in the videos, but the Oracle slides weren't branded 'Fusion Apps,'" she said via email. "I expect that makes it easier to incorporate Oracle's SaaS buys, whether Taleo or all the recent social purchases into its cloud apps vision."