Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL) Tuesday pumped new life into its 4-month-old Oracle.com initiative with the revamping of some of its services.

This time around, the Redwood Shores-based database software giant says its customers can store its applications on their own servers and still have Oracle run them remotely.

"This way, the customer has what they want - a server to hug - and they can leave the administration of the software to Oracle." says Oracle.com president Timothy Chou.

The services, packaged under the "Oracle E-business Suite Online Any Place" banner, include a software rental hub and ASPs for small to medium businesses.

Adding to the mix, hardware makers - Compaq Computer, Sun Microsystems and Hewlett-Packard - say they are lending a hand with support for Oracle customers, but Oracle says it will probably seek out more partners. Most likely to continue to fight off the advances of Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT) similarly structured .NET initiative.

"We've seen tremendous response to our E-Business Suite Online service offering and are now giving customers a new option," says Chou. "There are still a lot of companies that want to have their data sit on a server close to them. Through our hardware partners, we are able to offer standard certified configurations of our software that allow us to manage the software remotely."