When Ellison and other executives chatted about how Oracle's 10g product is helping companies adopt service-oriented architecture (define), and Oracle's support for open standards, On Demand software (such as software as a service), another story began to emerge: SOA's impact on the industry.

To hear Ellison and his lieutenants talk up 10g and grid computing is one thing. But to hear them toss around terms such as SOA, on-demand and Web services (define) in front of a bunch of financial analysts is quite another.

By talking up SOA and grid computing to an audience more comfortable with financial terms such as EBITDA, Ellison was also telling the spreadsheet crowd to be aware of the technology. He was telegraphing that more companies, especially major consumers of IT, are rapidly deploying SOAs and Web Services.