The drama over TikTok is far from resolved but right now it looks like Oracle may be one of the big winners from the saga. Its stock price rose 4% today on news that the ageing enterprise software giant would be a “trusted technology provider” to TikTok—in a deal the details of which remain murky. But simply being a tech partner is enough to give Oracle something of a new look with investors. As one close observer of the company said today: "People have talked more about Oracle in the last week than in the last six months."

Oracle shareholders will be thinking it’s about time. Oracle shares have been a poor performer, to put it charitably, for several years now. Over the past five years, Oracle stock underperformed the broad stock market as measured by the S&P 500 which, particularly for a tech stock, is saying something. Over the same period, by comparison, Microsoft is up five times the increase in the S&P.