If you’d asked four years ago, some analysts may not have had much faith in Oracle’s cloud offerings. But last year we saw the onset of a new era for Oracle, with the software provider gaining momentum ever since. At this year’s annual Oracle OpenWorld event, we’re finally seeing some products behind their cloud push, and the customers and analysts alike seem impressed.

Wrapping up coverage of Oracle OpenWorld’s Day 1 kickoff, analysts and co-hosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, John Furrier, Stu Miniman and Brian Gracely discussed the event’s keynote presentations, feedback from customers and vendors on the floor.

All about the cloud

It’s evident this year’s messaging is all about the cloud. One trend that really stood out to Furrier is the developer-friendly approach Oracle is now bringing to its marketing messaging, promoting all Oracle, all cloud, all the time.

But is messaging enough?

“Oracle is good at making everyone talk about what they’re saying,” noted Miniman, acknowledging that Oracle has some of the stickiest applications in today’s cloud market. The challenge will be pushing for a leadership position in cloud amongst other heavy hitters like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft and IBM.

Despite the moves, Oracle rivals are making in cloud services, Oracle customers should be in good shape, Furrier added. With many enterprises having already made large investments in cloud infrastructure, the cost of migrating away from, or to, Oracle is high. So what’s the reality for customers here?

What Gracely’s hearing from attendees is that “there is no other cloud” besides Oracle. But the reality is, customers don’t want to be locked into a single cloud, he explained. Noting offerings from Microsoft and even efforts supporting the open source Cloud Foundry, Gracely expects the industry will see multiple cloud options moving forward.

Will Oracle get the respect?

Quoting comedian Rodney Dangerfield, Furrier asked his co-hosts if Oracle will get the respect it is seeking as a cloud service provider.

If you look at Oracle’s messaging, there’s a new and clear push toward cloud at this year’s event. Gracely recalled last year’s OpenWorld where Oracle Founder and CTO Larry Ellison revealed his company’s newfound dedication to the cloud, an announcement that may have surprised many and demonstrated Oracle’s need to move in tandem with industry trends.

This cloud marketing has been an especially good fit for Oracle enterprise developers, making an appeal for easy integration with existing Oracle products, Furrier noted.

It seems existing Oracle customers will benefit the most from Oracle’s latest initiative, especially if they’re already comfortable with Oracle applications. Miniman pointed out the business model behind Oracle that’s enabled the company to control its environment through licensing agreements. And while others in the cloud market are shifting away from this type of business model, Oracle’s upgraded its portfolio to make it worth its customers’ while. “You know you’ll be safe in those environments,” Miniman said, speaking of Oracle’s licensing agreement in respect to the ease of integration for existing customers to stick around.

“Making a migration is difficult,” Miniman furthered. “It’s good to see Oracle make the effort for customers in their environment.”

Oracle has to disrupt themselves

Despite the strides Oracle has made in the past year, the panel still wonders if Oracle is prepared to disrupt themselves to prove a true leader in the cloud space. One area of contention is open source, where the analysts aren’t entirely convinced of Oracle’s dedication. Both Furrier and Miniman would like to see more transparency in Oracle’s open-source efforts, noting that Oracle’s discussed its support of initiatives like OpenStack, but so far have provided little detail as to how the open-source technology is being leveraged.

Gracely also feels Oracle needs to change its sales model, recognizing that the company is being active in installing leadership that understands the SaaS model. Nevertheless, Gracely would like to see a more transparent pricing model from Oracle. “I can’t go to Oracle and see pricing like I can see with AWS,” he pointed out.

However, Miniman thinks Oracle is playing a different game than AWS in terms of marketing cloud services, noting that Oracle is focusing efforts in areas it knows it can succeed. “They’re not playing the price-cutting war like AWS is,” he said.

One area of true disruption for Oracle appears to be security at the chip level, as the company unveiled its plans to encrypt data on silicon components. Bearing the fruit of its acquisition of Sun Microsystems, Inc., Oracle is appropriately layering security at even more levels of the stack.

“Some vendors I’ve talked to agree that the hardware and software need to be married there,” Miniman said. “It’s not all about commoditization. Oracle puts investment there.”

Can Oracle win beyond SaaS?

When it’s all said and done, Oracle seems to have a great portfolio around SaaS, and Gracely noted that the company’s new efforts of helping existing customers integrate and new customers migrate to Oracle cloud services will go over well. Yet Gracely wonders how Oracle will fare in the Industry-as-a-Service space. “AWS won the first game; Oracle wants to win the second game. Can Oracle win beyond SaaS?” Gracely asked.

“Year after year, Oracle’s changing direction – I’m super impressed,” Furrier retorted. “They’ve done an extremely good job of getting in the game with power, leveraging their core strengths.”

As Oracle pushes forward with its new cloud portfolio, it could very well set the pace of cloud adoption for the industry and challenge rivals to further develop their cloud offerings, Gracely concluded.

Watch the full video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of Oracle OpenWorld 2015. And join in on the conversation by CrowdChatting with theCUBE hosts.

Photo by SiliconANGLE