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).

When the economy takes a downward turn, company IT budgets are usually one of the first casualties.  This is the case with the current recession, as evidenced by an October 2008 CIO Magazine survey in which 40 percent of 234 IT chiefs surveyed said they are cutting spending, essentially freezing new IT initiatives, if not scrapping them altogether.

However, technology is a critical element of business, and despite the current economic climate, the need for reliable IT remains the same—especially when it comes to IT Maintenance or fundamental business applications such as email or customer relationship management (CRM). As companies across all industries face tough decisions about where to put their limited funds, here are three key reasons why the hosted or “software as a service” (SaaS) model makes a great deal of sense.

Financing

The Enterprise Management Associates recently conducted some new research that says that while enterprises are showing a cautious face to the world of cloud computing, those that have already tried it are planning to pile in enthusiastically.

Some Highlight from the survey - Out of 850 respondents:

52% said they planned to deploy cloud services both internally and externally, but only 11% planned for exclusively external use.
67% of cloud users said they have used Software as a Service (Saas)
43% said Infrastructure as a Service (Iaas)
42% have used Platform as a Service (Paas)
75% of all organization who planned for cloud computing said they wanted private clouds first and public clouds later, or not at all.