Oracle made its play for the cloud later than most others, but now it is steaming ahead with expansion plans that have seen it partner with Xamarin.

The move by Oracle will clearly bolster its Mobile Cloud, which competes with AWS, IBM’s Bluemix and Microsoft Azure.

This deal will also benefit Xamarin as it receives the backing of Oracle’s marketing to expose its development kit to more developers.

Xamarin uses the C# language, which is often used by developers in Microsoft Windows and Web app markets has a close relationship with Microsoft and its cloud, Azure.

Although the start-up wasn’t exclusive to Azure, its history is closely entwined, with it raising $82 million off the back of the strength of the relationship in the Microsoft community.

For Xamarin it is a good move, with the company able to tap into another develop market, while Oracle will be hoping that it can prise away some of those developers from its competitors to its own cloud.

Xamarin is a four year old start-up that is one of the top three services for cross-platform mobile app development, according to a recent survey by Vision Mobile.