>Sure, but having a compelling story about compute and having a massive advantage in knowledge of how to sell to the exact kinds of enterprises that haven't already made their big transition to the cloud yet isn't a bad combination to have if you want to establish a nice firm place in cloud. from which you can expand and develop what you need to bite off other parts of the market.

You mean what IBM is doing/has done? Oracle doesn't know how to sell to those people, it knows how to EXTORT those people. Most people I know hate Oracle with a passion as a business, and only continue to do business with them out of obligation.