Welcome to Part 6 in our week-long series on "IT's Golden Opportunity."

After all the showmanship and on-stage theatrics, it really comes down to this: Larry Ellison is allowing his company to love the cloud because orange is the new pink for Oracle.

This story offers a, uh, colorful example of how leading IT companies eventually manage to get out of their own way and adapt to the realities of the marketplace to come up with creative approaches to solving customer problems. Microsoft puts Office online, SAP puts its heart into SaaS, IBM re-energizes its hardware business, Hewlett-Packard moves beyond infrastructure, and Dell offers services.

And, perhaps most unlikely of all, Larry Ellison learns to--well, perhaps "embrace" is too strong a word; let's go with tolerate--the cloud.

Because in the case of Ellison and Oracle cloud computing, just nine months ago we had one of the world's most driven and competitive people (that would be Ellison) not just objecting to the idea of cloud computing, or expressing discomfort at the name (as IBM CEO Sam Palmisano and Hewlett-Packard CEO Mark Hurd both did at about exactly the same time), but absolutely ranting at the "ABSURDITY" of the idea and the "NITWIT" venture capitalists trying to invent a new industry by simply coming up with a new term.

A year earlier, in another high-energy rant about the sheer "IDIOCY" of cloud computing, we had a thoroughly bewildered and exasperated Ellison ask, "What the HELL is cloud computing?"

But oh what a difference a year or two--and a potentially lucrative market--can make! Today, Oracle offers two sets of cloud-enabling products and technologies: some of its core technologies like grid computing and middleware, still bearing their traditional names; and a second and newer group of tools to which Oracle has attached the very term--cloud computing--that only very recently sent Ellison into conniptions.

Oracle's website now includes things like the Cloud Computing Resource Center, and articles and podcasts on Clouds Bring Agility To the Enterprise, and information on Oracle's ongoing series of Cloud Computing Forum events held in dozens of cities around the globe.

And the company is not trying to ool-fay Ellison by slipping this cloud stuff out there in a secret language, either--here's part of Oracle's description of its bluntly named Cloud Computing Forum global road show:

"Ready to break through the haze around cloud computing? In this full-day event for IT professionals, Oracle experts clarify how organizations can take advantage of enterprise cloud computing. You'll learn the what, why, and how of cloud computing, so you can develop your organization's own cloud strategy and roadmap," says Oracle.

Contrast that to these comments about the cloud from Ellison just nine months ago in his entertaining and candid interview at the Churchill Club:

"My objection is the absurdity--the absurdity!--it's not that I don't like the idea--it's this [he sneers] NONSENSE--I mean, the guys say, 'Oh, it's in the CLOUD! Well, what is that? And then [to interviewer] you say, 'Are we dead?' Uh, yeah, we're dead--if there's no hardware or software in the cloud we are so [big sneer] screwed ... But it's NOT water vapor! All it is is a computer attached to a NETWORK--what are you TALKING about?? [crowd roars with laughter] I mean, whadda you think Google RUNS on? Do they run on WATER VAPOR? I mean, cloud--it's DATABASES, and OPERATING SYSTEMS, and MEMORY, and MICROPROCESSORS, and THE INTERNET!! [big applause from crowd]

"And all of a sudden, 'NO, IT'S NONE OF THAT--IT'S THE CLOUD!!' What are you TALKING ABOUT?? Now--and the VCs--I love the VCs: 'We only fund--oh, is that cloud? Whoa, whoa--Microsoft Word--change 'Internet' to 'cloud'--mass change--and give it back to these NITWITS on Sand Hill Road!"

So what changed Ellison's mind? What made this most decisive and single-minded of men accept into his company the very concepts he so frequently ridiculed as lunacy, nonsense, and worse?

There are three answers, and they come in this order: