Oracle execs will try to convince the universe that the company "gets" cloud computing with a series of cloud computing forums kicking off February 23 in North America.

The company has its work cut out for it.

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison caused a stir with his very vocal musings about the term "cloud computing," which has been abused and misused over the past few years. In his view, cloud computing is not a revolutionary departure in the computing model but an evolution of time and resource-sharing practices. Therefore, in his opinion, Oracle already is a cloud player because its database and middleware underlie such cloudy ventures as Salesforce.com's successful Software as a Service (SaaS) business and Apple's iTunes web store.

Oracle also joined the SaaS fray years ago with its own CRM OnDemand. That offering now accounts for more than 85% of Oracle's CRM sales, according to Ray Wang, analyst with The Altimeter Group. Still, the prevailing wisdom is that Salesforce.com has taken Oracle -- and the rest of the software world -- to school with its popular online sales force automation, customer relationship management software and with its Force.com Platform as a Service (PaaS).

 And, most pundits agree that Oracle has to do a lot more to prove its cloud cred.

Ellison's cloud "comments are complete nonsense and he knows it," said John Rymer, principal analyst at Forrester Research.

"[Ellison] talks about Salesforce being based on Oracle? Salesforce has invested years upon years of work on top [of Oracle technology] that has nothing to do with Oracle," Rymer said.

 Oracle building cloud computing credibility

Even some of Oracle's own reseller and integrator partners said the company has to make up for lost time in the cloud after having lost some of its most visionary technologists and technologies to start-ups -- some funded by Ellison himself.

"This whole road show they're doing is meant to show Oracle's vision of the private cloud … they don't want to look like the red-headed step child in that they don't believe the cloud is real," said one west coast Oracle database reseller.

"Oracle's interpretation of being in the cloud is much the same as it's take on being part of the dot.com boom, and that is: 'We're in the cloud business because everyone in there buys and runs our stuff.'" But, in reality, there's a huge difference between being the building blocks of the cloud and truly getting into the cloud business, this partner said.

Ellison's verbiage and the impression it created may be hard to overcome. Plenty of people at Oracle have no trouble grasping the implications of cloud computing and the opportunity but they have to tread carefully and find a way to get started "without calling Larry a liar," Rymer said. That's part of what this world tour is about -- showing off some of the company's progress in cloud computing while dodging direct confrontation with a boss who dismissed cloud computing as "everything we already do."

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Original article by: Barbara Darrow - Senior News Director                                                                                      Carl Brooks - Technology Writer (SearchCloudComputing.com)