Salesforce.com is going head-to-head with Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) in unveiling an online, database-as-a-service offering this week. The Database.com service from Salesforce is a cloud-based, multi-tenant service--a database model that Oracle CEO Larry Ellison called into question this fall.

The multi-tenant database offering enables Salesforce to offer a relatively low, upfront price, reports InformationWeek's Charles Babcock. However, the service differs from the on-premises relational database in that it does not yet come with the data management and administration tools that on-premises databases provide. Salesforce is developing procedures for the new system, Babcock reports.

As Babcock notes, some companies will be drawn to the per-user, per-month rates. What's more, he writes, some "departmental users welcome the chance to go around IT and its strictures to get a service quickly. And some enterprises may decide to tap into the cloud database instead of hiring another database administrator."

Salesforce is touting the new service as "the world's first enterprise database built for the cloud," reports ZDNet's Sam Diaz.  Database.com allows developers to use their choice of programming language for any device, and CFOs are likely to appreciate the pricing. And although CIOs may be drawn to the automatic upgrades, disaster recovery and backups, security is an ongoing concern, Dias writes.

For more:
- see Charles Babcock's article at InformationWeek
- see Sam Diaz' article at ZDNet

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