At the OpenWorld conference this week, Oracle announced a dramatic expansion of its cloud computing offerings. It is adding ten new services, many of which seem positioned to challenge offerings from cloud heavyweights like Amazon Web Services. For example, it will offer a Compute Cloud, Object Storage Cloud, Database Cloud, Billing and Revenue Management Cloud, Documents Cloud, Mobile Cloud and others.
In addition, Oracle seems to be competing with Salesforce.com’s AppExchange by launching its own Cloud Marketplace, where partners can offer apps that work with Oracle’s products.
For now, the new cloud services are available to select customers as a preview. They are expected to be widely available in the first half of next year. The company has not yet announced pricing.