"I don't believe this is such a binary issue," Chris Lynch told me, "whether the marketing cloud makes sense or doesn't make sense for a company."

Lynch, Head of Product Marketing at Oracle Marketing Cloud, was explaining that Oracle views the marketing cloud as a set of foundational technologies which people need—such as Eloqua and Responsys for orchestrating B2B and B2C customer experiences—and with which point solutions can readily be integrated. "We're devout about an open platform strategy," he said. "The existence of a marketing cloud need not be at the expense of other best-of-breed solutions."

"It's easy to look at cost," he said, "based on the initial contract. But what's quite often overlooked in the area of software-as-a-service is total cost of ownership." A marketing cloud may look pricier than point solutions, but it's necessary to look not just at the immediate product at point of sale, but at what will get delivered over a number of years—not least in terms of services and support which can prove costly. "There are a lot of varying versions of 'yes' when you ask if a solution can do something. You need to ask how it's going to be done, and about long-term cost."