It's a sign of Oracle's transformation that a new release of the vendor's flagship database software seemingly gets third billing behind new cloud computing services and "engineered systems" such as the new Exadata X3 Database In-Memory Machine.

Oracle executives would probably deny that and profess that they love all their children equally. But here at Oracle OpenWorld 2012 it's clear that the emphasis is not on the Oracle Database 12c (the "c" is for cloud) as a stand-alone product, but on how it fits into the Oracle "stack" of technologies.

"Best-of-breed technology at every level of the stack," said Oracle President Mark Hurd in a press conference Monday, emphasizing the vendor's goal of offering leading products from data storage and servers, to virtualization and database software, up through middleware applications.

"Our objective is for each of those levels of the stack, each of those layers of the stack, to be the absolute best at the job they perform," Hurd said.

[Related: Oracle Readies Cloud Blitz With New Partner Specialization, Integration Programs]

At the press conference, as he did earlier Monday in a brief keynote speech, Hurd said developing best-of-breed technology at each level is one of Oracle's four overarching strategies, along with integrating those components into the company's line of engineered systems, delivering next-generation cloud applications, and using all that technology to provide industry-specific systems.

Sunday night, in his own keynote, CEO Larry Ellison unveiled both the Oracle Database 12c and Exadata X3 -- the latter the third generation of the Exadata system that debuted in 2008. He also detailed Oracle's plans to expand its cloud offerings to include Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) services, and to offer an option for customers to implement Oracle Cloud as a private cloud system.

"We're now the only [vendor] with a complete cloud offering, end-to-end," Hurd said Monday."This is a big deal." He acknowledged that Oracle's efforts will mean more "co-opetition" with companies such as Salesforce.com, which competes with Oracle in the CRM application space but also uses Oracle database and middleware software to run its services.

NEXT: More Details Offered On The Oracle Database 12c Release

In a Monday keynote Andy Mendelsohn, Oracle senior vice president of database server technologies, offered a deeper look into the technology of the new Oracle Database 12c that's expected to ship sometime in 2013.

Ellison had emphasized the new multitenancy capabilities of the Oracle Database 12c, an architecture that he said offers cost and performance benefits for cloud computing systems that run on the database.

Oracle Database 12c will offer the ability for administrators to create what Mendelsohn described as multiple "pluggable" databases that, in turn, run in a single database instance or "container." That allows a business or hosting service provider to run multiple Software-as-a-Service applications on a single database.

While each pluggable database has its own metadata and private data files, the container is managed as a single entity, simplifying database administration and reducing costs. "What we've done with 12c is we've done a fundamental re-architecture of the database," Mendelsohn said, adding: "Now if I'm an administrator, I have one database overall to administer."

Mendelsohn, however, did not address the question of how the database software's multitenancy would affect licensing and pricing for the product.

Juan Loaiza, senior vice president of engineered systems technology, provided a closer look at the Exadata X3 that incorporates flash and DRAM in-memory data storage -- and uses no disk drives.

Hurd said that of all the Exadata systems sold since 2008 about one-half are running OLTP applications and the other half are used for data warehouse tasks.

Bluenog, a Piscataway, N.J.-based solution provider and Oracle channel partner, is certified as a specialized partner on the Oracle Exalogic server and is getting a certified specialization for the Exadata system.

"Oracle is betting the farm on these engineered systems," said Bluenog co-founder Sastry Taruvai in an interview at Oracle OpenWorld. The solution provider doubled its sales in 2011 and could double them against this year as it grows its Oracle product sales and related services.

Taruvai also said the multitenant architecture of the Oracle Database 12c is "huge" and Bluenog eventually will expand into selling Oracle cloud services. "Getting specialized in the cloud is a natural extension for us," he said.

Tuesday Ellison is expected to cover Oracle's social computing strategy in his afternoon keynote speech.

PUBLISHED OCT. 2, 2012