This is pretty interesting: Oracle just announced Cloud Office which, surprise surprise, is an office suite based in the cloud, like Google Docs and Microsoft's Docs.com and Office 365.

The suite is based on OpenOffice.org, the open source office suite which Oracle owns. It's part of those assets, like Java, that Oracle acquired from SUN and that many people wondered what, if anything, Oracle would do with, because it's not directly related to Oracle's core business of enterprise databases.

There's two ways to read this.

One is that, like the original OpenOffice, this is just meant to distract Microsoft a little bit by offering a free/cheap alternative to its Office cash cow. Larry Ellison famously views Microsoft as a big rival, as did SUN, and having a potentially disruptive offering to their cash cow is a nice shot across their bow.

But a more interesting possibility is that this is more than just a side project meant to distract and annoy Microsoft and Google, and that Ellison actually plans to go after one of Microsoft's core businesses in a big way. The cloud is here, and even though Microsoft has a cloud version of Office with Docs.com, it's not really, actually "all in" on the cloud and most of its Office revenues, and certainly almost all of its profits, comes from desktop software. If so, this should be really interesting to watch.

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