Kumar Nandigam, CEO of Dallas, Texas-based solution provider TEKPROS, is already an Oracle partner, and he was encouraged by what he heard at NexGen.

"It's good to know Oracle is finally adopting to cloud," Nandigam told CRN, adding, "I hope they will offer all their products, including the e-business suite, in the cloud."

Nandigam told CRN he believes Oracle's new co-CEO, Mark Hurd, will pursue the cloud model more aggressively than the company has in the past.

Brad Wohlander, CEO of Sentry Global Technologies in Plano, Texas, said Porter helped "reinforce something we've known for many years, which is the cloud is the service room of the future," Wohlander said.

"Operating on-prem servers makes about as much sense as operating your own power plant," Wohlander told CRN, though he noted that the timeline to profitability from joining Oracle's cloud program "appears to be too steep."

Wohlander told CRN he came to NexGen to learn about vendors that would make good cloud partners for Sentry. His company is only interested in companies that exclusively sell through the channel -- Wohlander said he is unwilling to feel like he's competing with his own technology partners.

"We're trying to figure out which vendors to pursue after the conference," he told CRN.

Some of those vendors at NexGen he knows a good deal about, others he's aware of but didn't know they had channel programs, and still others he's never heard of. He wants to hear from them all.

For more NexGen Cloud coverage, visit CRN.com.