The scoring slowed right down as the ball started to turn and before long India turned to the irrepressible Yuvraj to work the oracle again.

BBC: By Jonathan Stevenson

And on March 24th, Novell announced that it would work with Oracle, the world's biggest database firm, to develop applications for intranets.

ECONOMIST: Novell

Now Cisco is showcasing Lew Tucker, a well-known veteran of developer work at both Salesforce and the pre-Oracle Sun Microsystems, who came on as cloud CTO in the middle of this year.

FORBES: Cisco Wants Cloud Developers

At Oracle, the strategy is all about designing IP-rich hardware and software that are engineered from the gound up to work together, says Juan Loaiza, Oracle senior vice-president for systems technologies.

FORBES: Oracle's Secret Sauce: Why Exadata Is Rocking the Tech Industry

An example of an application that does not work well in a simple cloud environment is a shared database, such as the typical Oracle database application, where the information is one big block of data that needs to be manipulated all the time by many computing processes and where access to the shared data needs to be synchronized and managed.

FORBES: Moore's Law: Why It Matters Now More Than Ever

Most of Oracle's 15, 000 developers now work on new software, borrowing the best features the company acquired.

FORBES: Irreplaceable?

Big guys like IBM, Oracle, SAP and Sun Microsystems spent the tech downturn upgrading their computer systems to work together and handle these chores, partly as a way to make money in the slump.

FORBES: Magazine Article

And Oracle's systems have been consolidated, with 100 or so powerful central computers handling the work of thousands of servers dotted around the world, with resulting gains in business intelligence and control.

ECONOMIST: Oracle

B2B spin-out, the executives of such firms are easy targets for fast-moving e-business software providers such as Commerce One (the aerospace victor), Oracle and Ariba, which often propose the deal and promise to do most of the hard work.

ECONOMIST: In the air