"Have we done enough [with Hadoop tooling]? I don't think we're there yet, but we've made some good steps," Mendelsohn added.

Oracle's R distribution is integrated with its 11g database, allowing R applications to tap data within those systems, Oracle said. A standard distribution of R will be used, but Oracle also plans to release some proprietary packages for it, Mendelsohn said.

Oracle also plans to offer all of the software products in stand-alone form as well as with the appliance, according to a statement.

Pricing and a release date for the Big Data Appliance weren't available Monday. It will compete with products such as Aster Data, Netezza and Greenplum.

Forrester analyst James Kobielus said it's not Oracle's first 'Big Data' appliance, if big data is defined as "the three Vs," he said: "volume (petabytes of stored analytic data), velocity (real-time data capture, transformation, loading, analysis, and query), and variety (handle diverse structured, semi-structured data)."