Dive Brief:

• Oracle on Tuesday announced more support for the developer community with the addition of PHP development to its cloud platform.
• The company said it plans to add other languages soon, including Ruby.
• Oracle also launched Oracle MySQL Cloud Service to provide a simple and automated cloud service that will allow organizations to "securely and cost-effectively" deploy MySQL applications at scale, according to the announcement. 

Dive Insight:

Oracle is looking to attract more developers to its environment, which in turn could work to draw in more cloud customers. Google, however, beat Oracle to the punch with PHP development in its cloud.

Oracle said that by giving developers a choice — whether its programming languages, databases or virtual machines — developers can more quickly build modern applications in the cloud. With the move, Oracle said, developers get "friction-free, instant and immersive access to the latest technologies in the cloud."

The company wants to dominate the cloud space, and many of OpenWorld's announcements thus far have been dedicated to Infrastructure as a Service initiatives. Larry Ellison, executive chairman and chief technology officer of Oracle, announced plans to heavily challenge Amazon Web Services in the space during his keynote address at OpenWorld in San Francisco Sunday night. 

"Amazon's lead is over," Ellison said. "Amazon is going to have serious competition going forward."