Oracle Executive Chairman Larry Ellison along with others unveiled Sunday new cloud applications and services, including a training tool that integrates with the company's human resources application, and also detailed plans for future Java releases of the enterprise and standard versions.

The company announced a new cloud program within Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN). This builds on Oracle’s program and enables existing and new Oracle partners to grow their cloud business with Oracle.

New cloud program designations unveiled today within OPN will be launched February 1, 2016.

In addition, Oracle launched a new entry point into the OPN program called the Cloud Registered level. This program provides immediate opportunities for new cloud partners to begin their journey and grow their business with the Oracle Cloud, requiring no initial investment. New cloud partners are encouraged to join OPN at the Cloud Registered level between today and May 31, 2016 to take advantage of key Oracle Cloud focused benefits with no membership fee. Cloud Registered level members will be eligible for benefits including the ability to resell Oracle Cloud Platform solutions, including Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) solutions, access to the OPN Cloud Business Builder for sales, marketing and technical training and resources, as well as OPN branding.

On the database front, Oracle 12c Release 1 (12.1) introduced the multitenant option. The company is now enhancing the database to support a higher number of tenants, without sacrificing on security and privacy, Ellison said. 12.2 will support over 4,000 tenants in one database in comparison to 252 in the previous version 12.1. Oracle also plans a multitenant Java server.

The company also announced that Exadata, its combined compute and storage system for running Oracle database software, now used in on-premise deployments, will be offered as a cloud service that will offer identical software and hardware for on-site and Oracle cloud implementations.

In a measure directed at IBM, Oracle also introduced Exa Your Power Program to help customers migrate Oracle Database from IBM Power systems to Oracle Engineered Systems using Intel technology.

The Exa Your Power program is a free database migration Proof of Concept (PoC) for qualified customers. Oracle will assess the customer’s environment, deliver a customized database migration results report, and show how they may be able to reduce the time and cost required to run critical database workloads.

The Exa Your Power Program is jointly funded by Oracle and Intel. Specifically, the program offers qualified customers:

• A free Proof of Concept migration of one or more sample databases
• A customized report documenting the migration process and test results
• A roadmap for modernizing their database environment to Oracle Engineered Systems optimized for Oracle Database
  

Oracle executives, with an assist from former Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy, took to the stage to discuss about Java platform's past, present, and future.

The planned Java EE 8 edition, due in 2017, will focus on HTML5, cloud enablement, and ease of use, as well as use of the model-view-controller framework and improved security. This week Oracle is upgrading its Java application server, WebLogic Server, to version 12.2.1 for better multitenancy support, consolidation of Java workloads, and continuous availability.

Java SE 9, planned for next year, will use modularity to solve issues with the Java classpath and the monolithic Java Development Kit, said Mark Reinhold, chief architect for the Java platform group at Oracle.

Beyond Java 9, Oracle called for development of Project Valhalla, for advanced features such as value types and specialization, and Project Panama, for access to native data and native code as part of Java 10.

In the Java ME realm, Intel Vice President Michael Greene said Intel had added Java support to the Intel IoT Developer Kit. Additionally, Java ME now runs on the Intel architecture, Greene said.