Larry Ellison Hints At New Partnerships With Salesforce, Microsoft And NetSuite Coming Next Week

Oracle has got some big news to share next week, CEO Larry Ellison told Wall Street analysts during the company's quarterly conference call on Thursday.

Then he went on to spill quite a few beans about it.

"Next week we will be announcing technology partnerships with the largest and most important SaaS companies and infrastructure companies in the cloud," he said.

These companies will be "committing to our technology for years to come" and these "partnerships will reshape the cloud," Ellison said.

We got the impression that this news will be centered on the Oracle 12c, a brand new kind of database announced last October, where the "c" stands for cloud.

The Oracle 12c is a "multitenant" database, meaning it is designed to be used and shared by multiple companies. That's very different than the traditional Oracle database, which is used by one company.

We think this announcement is about the Oracle 12c because that's what he was talking about when he mentioned the upcoming partnerships.

He even went on to name Salesforce.com, NetSuite and Microsoft.

It's not clear, of course, what they'll be signing on to do. Maybe they'll be signing on to use 12c in their clouds, but it could be less dramatic than that. Maybe they are simply agreeing to work with 12c in some form.

It's not surprising NetSuite would partner with Oracle. Larry Ellison cofounded the company and still owns a sizeable stake in it.

Salesforce is more surprising. Ellison was also an investor in Salesforce.com, cofounded by his former employee Marc Benioff. The two still respect each other, but their relationship has been strained in recent years as they found their companies competing.

Microsoft would be the most surprising. It has its own database, SQL Server, and Microsoft uses its own tech in its own cloud. But the two are not arch enemies. They have partnered on numerous occasions over the years.