Oracle Corp founder and Executive Chairman Larry Ellison announced that the company is broadening its cloud-computing services, positioning Oracle to compete more directly with Amazon.com Inc.
“We’re prepared to compete with Amazon.com on price,” Ellison declared during a webcast presentation on Monday. He also revealed that Oracle will now offer online storage and the capability for customers to run their applications entirely in Oracle’s cloud.
This expansion marks a significant strategic move for Oracle, transitioning its traditional database and customer relationship management businesses to cloud-based solutions. “This is a really big deal,” said Ellison, who stepped down as CEO of the company in 2014.
Currently, Amazon Web Services leads the market in providing cloud computing capabilities, followed by Microsoft Corp’s Azure service and International Business Machines Corp. With this move, Oracle aims to capture a larger share of the competitive cloud market.