Oracle Business OnLine took pride of place in Ellison's survey of the next wave of business computing, which he called 'Internet computing'.

He revealed that the service will run on the Oracle8i platform, the latest release of the company's flagship relational database system. Oracle8i was previewed last month (September) and is due to ship in early 1998. Oracle is positioning it as the primary platform for Web computing.

The primary purpose of Oracle Business OnLine will be to host applications that independent software vendors have developed to run on Oracle8i, he said. One of the first applications Ellison cited was a global sales forecasting application.

Ellison later revealed to reporters that Business Online might ultimately be spun off as an independent business, describing it as essentially an extension to the company's existing data centre.

But this low-key destiny seemed to contradict the impression given by Mark Jarvis, Oracle's senior VP of marketing, when he had told reporters at the launch of Business OnLine that it would account for half of all Oracle's software licence revenues within five years. Prior to Ellison's speech, Oracle had been marketing Business OnLine as an applications hosting service for its own suite of financial, manufacturing and human resources software.

The Oracle Business OnLine service is in a pilot programme now, and is scheduled to go live in the US early in 1999. International availability is due to follow later that year. It will make applications available for a monthly, per-user fee. The client platform is any Java-compliant Web browser.