As Oracle CloudWorld kicks off today in Washington, DC, customers will be looking to see what new cloud offerings and plans the company has in store since announcing its commitment to the cloud at the Oracle OpenWorld 2015 conference.

Will they see evidence that founder and CTO Larry Ellison’s vision of bringing hardware and software together to compete in the cloud is becoming a reality? Is the company creating a homogenous experience between on-premise systems and cloud systems? Is it fulfilling customers’ wishes to help them get to the cloud?

An on-ramp to the Oracle Cloud

Today’s announcement of the Oracle Cloud Machine indicates that the company is on track to deliver on its cloud promises. Oracle is calling it a “stepping stone in the journey to the cloud.” It is an on-premise implementation of Oracle Cloud that includes the same platform as a service (PaaS) and infrastructure as a service (IaaS) as Oracle Cloud, but it’s operated and delivered as a service behind the firewall.

Similar to IBM BlueMix Local, Oracle Cloud Machine is an option for organizations that can’t or would prefer not to use public cloud services, said Brian Gracely, lead cloud analyst at Wikibon. Oracle will put all of its hardware, software and operations into customers’ data centers — leasing it to them over three years — and the company will even operate it if necessary.

Expect Thomas Kurian, president of product development at Oracle, to have plenty to say about the Oracle Cloud Machine and its integrated application and platform cloud services during his keynote address, which SiliconANGLE Media’s theCUBE will simulcast. In addition, Steve Daheb, senior vice president of Oracle Cloud, will be a guest on theCUBE.

Business modernization: New SaaS, PaaS and IaaS services

Attendees can expect to hear a lot about Oracle’s new SaaS, PaaS and IaaS services and how to use cloud opportunities to transform and modernize their businesses, the main theme of the event. The latest additions to Oracle’s SaaS portfolio include services to help with customer experience; supply chain management, enterprise resource planning and enterprise performance management; and human capital management. Attendees can learn how to use those to transform sales, modernize human resources and modernize customer relationship management (CRM) implementations.

Business transformation is a hot topic—and one many cloud service providers are addressing—because companies need to modernize to remain competitive. As Mark Hurd, co-CEO of Oracle said in an interview with theCUBE following OpenWorld 2015, customers have to be innovative and he said Oracle can help them do that.

For businesses that need help with their application modernization efforts, Oracle will have a session that addresses how developers can use a DevOps approach to improve agility and efficiency. A DevOps approach is becoming increasingly important as organizations move their applications to the cloud. If organizations want to be able to quickly develop, deploy and change applications, they need to get away from traditional application development and adopt DevOps, cloud experts say. Attendees can expect to hear how they can do that with Oracle’s new management cloud services.

Other cloud-based application development topics to be addressed include native web and mobile application development and lightweight Java application development.

In addition to those sessions, Melanie Posey, research vice president at IDC, will give a keynote on cloud trends and opportunities. Posey will also be a guest on theCUBE during the event.

The numbers: SaaS and PaaS growth

Given Oracle’s positive Q3 report, which shows revenue from the company’s SaaS and PaaS exceeded expectations, attendees can expect to hear more about the success of those services and how the company is succeeding in the cloud, Gracely predicted. Oracle’s business overall is rather flat, but its cloud segment is up year over year, he said.

Look for Oracle executives to reassert the company’s position as a strong player in the cloud and what its strengths are compared with other cloud providers.

To hear more about Oracle’s vision for the cloud, listen to Mark Hurd’s interview with John Furrier on theCUBE: