On Tuesday, Oracle's top executives said that the company expects to generate more than $1 billion in new software-as-a-service (SaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS) business in 2015.

This will put oracle in direct competition with Salesforce. com in the cloud market. During Oracle's quarterly earnings call, the company's Chairman and CTO Larry Ellison told financial analysts that people won't have to wait any longer to know who's going to sell the most SaaS and PaaS this year.

Oracle's SaaS and PaaS revenue grew by 30% to $372 million in the quarter that ended on February 28, the third of Oracle's fiscal year.

Overall Oracle's business did less well. Total revenue for the quarter came in at $9.3 billion, unchanged from last year and below what analysts had been expecting. Earnings of the company on an adjusted basis were $0.68 per share, in line with the forecast. Revenue from new software licenses fell 7%.

However, on its cloud business, where the company focused, results came out to be positive and came better than expected.

Mark Hurd, who shares the CEO title with Katz, said that Oracle added nearly $200 million of new SaaS and PaaS business in annual recurring revenue, in the quarter. In the current quarter, the company expects to sell more than $300 million.

Hurd said, "We have a real chance to sell more SaaS and PaaS new business this coming quarter than any other cloud services provider. I think our hyper-growth in the cloud comes as a big surprise to a lot of people".

Salesforce. com declined to comment on the Oracle executives' comments and pointed to its own financial results that were reported last month. The results reveal an increase in overall revenue of 26% year over year, to $1.44 billion.