The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) is extending its partnership with Oracle for another three years. This partnership is through a research-and-development programme set up by the laboratory, called CERN openlab; it provides a unique research framework in which scientists and leading IT companies can work together. One of the aims of the partnership with Oracle is to develop a high-performance Cloud infrastructure capable of storing and analyzing vast quantities of controls data, such as that generated by the gigantic research infrastructures used at the laboratory to probe the origin of the universe. Oracle can also make use of insights gained from the program to provide its customers with extremely powerful and future-proof Cloud technologies.