The next version of Oracle's database will be released in either December or January, CEO Larry Ellison said Wednesday during an onstage interview at the AllThingsD conference.

Ellison let the news slip in the context of discussing the ongoing lawsuit between Oracle and Hewlett-Packard over Oracle's decision to stop porting new versions of its software to Intel's Itanium chips, which are used in some HP servers.

"The first thing that we won't port onto Itanium comes out next year," Ellison said. "And that's the latest version of our database, which comes out in either December of this year or January of next year."

Ellison didn't provide any further details of the upcoming database release, which will supersede the current 11g Release 2, which debuted in September 2009.

The next edition may be called 12c, with the c referring to "cloud." Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c, which was released in October, used that naming convention.

Oracle has placed a strong emphasis on its cloud computing strategy of late. Ellison is expected to make some major cloud-related product announcements during an event next week.

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