"That's how we see our role at Oracle, to turn the Internet into an industrial-strength tool for E-commerce and information management," Lane said.

Through partnerships and additions to its own product line, the database vendor increasingly wants to be seen as a complete "solutions provider" -- a company that offers a range of products and services that businesses need for transaction processing, data warehousing and content management.

Central to its strategy is Oracle8i, the forthcoming version of Oracle's flagship database, which is due to be unveiled officially here today and includes new features designed to simplify the development and deployment of Internet-based programs.

"I see Oracle8i being to the Internet what Windows 3.1 was to the PC," Lane said.

The Oracle Partnership Program, in which the company teams with third-party vendors who provide the compatible products needed to round out its platform, is also central to the company's strategy, Lane said. Oracle will spend an additional $40 million this year on helping partners develop and test products that work with Oracle8i, Lane said.

In particular, Oracle will try to address the needs of specific industry areas, such as the automotive and banking industries, Lane said. "We must become more industry-sensitive, we must learn to provide more value by industry," he said.

In a bid to make Oracle an easier company to do business with, a recent training course called for managers to go "outside" of the company and put themselves in the shoes of customers and partners trying to gather information about the database vendor.

"What they discovered by being in those shoes was amazing," Lane said, drawing appreciative applause from the audience.

The company is set to launch next year Oracle Business Online, a hosting service that allows businesses to lease Oracle's Release 11 applications suite. The suite will be hosted on servers maintained by Oracle and used by companies in exchange for a monthly fee.

"We are a database company; this is a major transformation for Oracle," Lane said of the service.

Oracle's senior vice president of marketing, Mark Jarvis, also took to the stage at the show yesterday. He repeated many of Lane's themes of why it makes sense for customers to buy and sell products over the Internet.

Taking his message a step further, Jarvis promised that in the first half of 1999, Oracle will offer three new sets of electronic-commerce software and service bundles: one rapid implementation bundle, designed to give companies a "jump start" on establishing an online presence; another bundle to allow for unassisted online sales; and a third, for building in-house procurement systems.

To help drive home the message about its Internet-focused, solutions-oriented approach, Oracle is planning to run a wave of television advertisements worldwide in the coming weeks, another first for the company, Lane said.