Technology giant Oracle Corp has developed an ambitious array of cloud computing services in a bid to catch up with Amazon.com and Salesforce.com, two leaders in the field.

The offerings were unveiled by an enthusiastic Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison, a contrast to his attitude at an investor meeting several years ago when he mocked cloud computing as a financial analyst asked him what his strategy was for expanding into that area.

The new offerings include software for managing tasks such as sales and human resources, a database, security technology and a platform for writing Web applications with Oracle's widely used Java software.

Ellison said programs and data that Oracle hosts on its cloud can easily be moved to a customer's own data center or Amazon's rival cloud.

He added that the "Oracle Public Cloud" would not be compatible with web-based offerings from rival Salesforce.com, which runs on proprietary standards that are not compatible with other networks.

"It's like the roach (motel) - you fly into the (Salesforce) cloud and you never get out," he said. - Reuters