Oracle’s annual event OpenWorld is one that really stood out this week. The 5-day event at San Francisco was packed with product updates, but it was Larry Ellison’s big keynote was what really made a mark.

Oracle CEO
Photo courtesy of Hartmann Studios

During his lengthy speech the CEO announced a number of new products, along with new direction for his company. Ellison unveiled the 12c release of Oracle’s database platform – the c stands for cloud, and the software is pegged as the first truly multi-tenant DB on the market. He also dwelt into a much more notable update – Oracle is making a push into the cloud services space.

The company is working on a new IaaS service that will run on its own engineered systems, rather than the ultra-efficient, bare bone boxes that AWS and Google leverage to maintain competitive rates. Oracle’s agenda also involves software-as-a-service, although Ellison didn’t disclose any other details.  What he did say is that his company won’t be making any more large cloud acquisitions in the near future, which means rumor-mongers can definitely scratch Workday off their list.

This week the cloud-based RP provider announced pricing for its upcoming IPO  – $21 to $24 per share, which would put it at a $3.85 billion on the higher end. Workday could raise as much as $589 million in the public offering, a huge capital boost.

Workday was co-founded by  David Duffield, who served as the CEO of PeopleSoft before it was gobbled up by Oracle in 2005.

Application performance management firm Precise also had a big update this week. The developer announced the 9.5 release of its Precision admin platform, which features a number of significant improvements. The latest version offers more transparency in virtualized environments,  tracks mobile activity across the corporate network and incorporates more analytical capabilities across the board.