The plot thickens. First Larry Ellison spills the beans about looming partnerships between Oracle and several big-name cloud companies, including Microsoft.

Now Microsoft just hastily sent out invitations to a press conference which will feature Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer, his top cloud guy Satya Nadella and Oracle president Mark Hurd.

Given the people involved, it does sound like the news will be big.

The press conference is on Monday, just a few days before Microsoft hosts its worldwide developer conference in San Francisco next week.

Again, we suspect that this involves Oracles' new cloud database Oracle 12c, because Ellison all but said so on a conference call with Wall Street Analysts on Thursday.

We'll find out soon.