Analysis
Ellison’s quip framed cloud computing as purely hypothetical, but by 2008, Amazon Web Services (AWS) had been offering EC2 and S3 for two years, and Salesforce had nearly a decade of SaaS operations. His statement likely aimed to downplay competitors (e.g., AWS) while Oracle lagged in cloud offerings, rather than reflect technical reality. However, mainstream enterprise adoption *was* limited compared to later years, giving his critique partial contextual validity.
Background
In 2008, cloud computing was emerging but not yet dominant; AWS’s revenue was ~$100M (vs. $80B+ in 2023), and terms like 'cloud' were often conflated with utility computing or hosting. Ellison, whose Oracle later pivoted aggressively to cloud, had a vested interest in portraying it as unproven. His remark became infamous as cloud adoption accelerated post-2010.
Verdict summary
While Ellison’s 2008 skepticism reflected early-stage cloud adoption, his dismissal as 'not even water vapor' ignored already operational enterprise cloud services like AWS (launched 2006) and Salesforce (1999).