Oracle posted a rather mixed Q1 earnings report this week, with software up, hardware down and net income and earnings per share rising ever so slightly, but by far the bigger talking point on everybody’s lips was the one important tidbit that CEO Larry Ellison gave up about the agenda at next week’s OpenWorld event.

Last year’s edition of Oracle’s annual get-together was all about its emerging cloud strategy, and this year it looks like in-memory databases will be the cornerstone of its efforts to ramp these efforts up.

Specifically, Ellison revealed that we can expect to learn more about the Oracle database’s new In-Memory option that’s set to be announced next week:

“Virtually every existing application that runs on top of the Oracle database will run dramatically faster by simply turning on the new In-Memory feature. Our customers don’t have to make any changes to their applications whatsoever; they simply flip on the in-memory switch, and the Oracle database immediately starts scanning data at a rate of billions or tens of billions of rows per second.”

The obvious target for Oracle here is its rival SAP and its HANA in-memory database that’s capable of crunching through vast amounts of data at breakneck speeds. In just over two years since SAP HANA’s launch, the database has become one of the company’s most successful ever products, nabbing more than 1,500 customers.

Of course this is nothing compared to the 300,000 plus clients running Oracle’s database, but HANA remains a serious threat nonetheless. As BusinessInsider points out, HANA is scooping up clients at an extremely rapid rate because it offers the fastest database technology in the business. And what with many of its customers running SAP software alongside Oracle’s database, the big concern for Oracle is that SAP will try and tempt these to use HANA instead, further eroding its position as market leader.

Refreshing the product portfolio

Oracle’s In-Memory database option is just one of several key announcements we’re expecting to see at Oracle OpenWorld next week, and is another sign that the company is finally showing some real dedication to the cloud after years of stubbornly refusing to accept the realities of Big Data, Hadoop, and NoSQL. But the big question on everyone’s lips is whether or not they can actually pull it off. As Wikibon’s Dave Vellante notes, Oracle’s strategy is markedly different from the typical cloud/converged infrastructure story – it’s not just about SaaS, or IaaS, with Oracle, but rather its a complete Oracle Stack – the company is quite unique in that it plans to offer the whole kit and kaboodle under one wrapper.

“They’re talking about an all-oracle converged stack called EXA – hypervisor, middle-ware, etc. and management, all in one stack. The most complete stack in the biz,” said Vellante.

Nobody else even comes close to what Oracle is offering – not IBM, not Microsoft, nor anyone else, Vellante tells us, but that doesn’t necessarily guarantee its on easy street. Vellante goes on to explain that one of Oracle’s biggest challenges is the massive brain drain its facing, losing sales people by the dozen due to its insistence on pushing its new EXA. Oracle remains a company in transition, its been slow to embrace the cloud, and though revenues are showing some improvements there’s still a long road ahead.

Things looking up for Oracle

Oracle’s strategy should ultimately prove to be successful. We’ve already seen a turnaround of sorts with the unveiling of its new ZS3-2 and ZS3-4 storage products, which are a huge step up in its offerings according to Wikibon’s David Floyer. In a recent professional alert, Floyer noted that the two products deliver Tier-1 performance but at Tier-3 prices, and have already attracted important clients like Fujitsu and the Japanese government.

Moreover, as Vellante points out in an earlier post, Oracle’s ZS3 products underscore the company’s strategy of offering high degrees integration to drive out operational costs over time.

“Rather than cutting prices, Oracle is all about getting value from this level of integration, helping its customers to reduce management costs and focus human capital on more strategic activities,” writes Vellante.

Oracle’s competitors might argue that their own products are more functional even if they’re locked out, but the challenge for them will be to show they can match its value proposition – and they must do so before Oracle can deliver its new capabilities to the market.