At its annual global Partner Kickoff event, with more than 4 000 partners attending the virtual event across the globe, Oracle’s top executives outlined key strategies and insights partners need to sell to the C-Suite and excel in fiscal year 2014, as well as introduced new programmes and resources to help its 25 000 strong partner community grow and profit with Oracle.
New programmes include the availability of additional partner Cloud Specialisations, the opening of the Oracle Cloud Resale Program, enriched partner incentive rebates and an enhanced partner Web site.
Leveraging OPN’s extensive enablement resources, now, more than 5 000 Oracle partners are Specialised, representing more than 30 000 individual Specialisations.
Partners now have the ability to become Specialised in more than 130 available technology, application, solution, and industry specific certification areas; including 12 Oracle Fusion Application and 18 Oracle Engineered Systems and Server and Storage Specialisations, which are seeing rapid adoption.
New certification specialists have also grown 20% in the past year alone, bringing the total to more than 100 000 certified specialists worldwide.
Oracle Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) continue to see the benefits of running their applications with Oracle Engineered Systems by participating in the Oracle Exastack Program.
Over 725 ISV applications have achieved an Oracle Exastack Ready status and are certified to Oracle Exadata Database Machine, Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud, or Oracle SPARC SuperCluster. Additionally, more than 140 ISV applications have successfully completed performance testing and tuning through the Oracle Exastack Optimised Program.
Powered by Oracle Exadata Database Machine and Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud, Oracle Cloud breaks down traditional cloud and business process silos by delivering the broadest selection of enterprise-grade cloud solutions, including Oracle Application, Platform, Infrastructure and Social Services, all on a subscription basis.
At OPN Exchange, Oracle unveiled a comprehensive new set of Oracle Cloud partner programs, helping partners speed time to market with new cloud-based services and solutions and deliver increased value to customers. Programmes include the Oracle Cloud Referral Program, Oracle Cloud Specialisation featuring RapidStart and Oracle Cloud Builder Specialisations, Oracle Cloud Resale Programme and Oracle Platform Services for ISVs.
Already, more than 10 000 individuals have achieved Oracle Cloud specialist certifications and partner Cloud referrals have achieved an average of 125 percent growth quarter-over-quarter since the launch of the program.
Expanding partner opportunities in the cloud, Oracle today announced that new Cloud Specialisations are available for Oracle ERP Cloud (Fusion) including Financials and Procurement, Oracle SCM Cloud (Fusion), and Oracle CX Cloud including Oracle Sales Cloud (Fusion). Several other Specialisations will be available in the first quarter of Oracle’s fiscal 2014.
In addition, Oracle today announced that the Oracle Cloud Resale Programme will be available the first quarter of Oracle’s fiscal 2014. Through the programme, qualifying Specialised partners will have the opportunity to resell Oracle Cloud services, creating a sustainable new revenue stream over the lifetime of their customer’s Oracle Cloud subscription.
OPN Incentive Program, which offers partners rebates on select Oracle technologies and rewards partners for investing in strategic areas for Oracle, continued to see strong traction throughout FY13.
Designed for broad market success, the strategic products covered in the OPN Incentive Programme provide partners the opportunity to acquire new customers and close larger deals, while gaining greater margins.
Oracle is enhancing the programme to offer partners additional rebate incentives for selling strategic Oracle hardware and software solutions engineered to work together.
The Oracle PartnerNetwork web site is the central access point for all partners, providing a comprehensive set of enablement tools, as well as the ability to manage transactions and drive new revenue.
Based on partner feedback, OPN today unveiled the redesigned Oracle PartnerNetwork web site and enhanced Partner Store making it easier for partners to learn and grow with Oracle throughout every stage of the channel lifecycle.
New enhancements include:
* Streamlined navigation – making it easier for partners to quickly and easily get to the key business processes they need to better manage their OPN membership, as well as leverage the resources they need to achieve Specialisation, become Oracle Exastack Ready or Oracle Exastack Optimised, and earn Oracle Validated Integration.
* Enhanced knowledge zones – provide partners easy access to learning resources, sales kits, presentations, event materials, call scripts, and configuration tools that can be used to enhance selling potential.
* Improved partner store – allows partners to seamlessly place orders and register deals and now provides product recommendations that can help partners offer a complete Oracle solution maximising the sale and rebate.
* Enriched partner catalogue system – allows partners to leverage the latest technologies, including video, to better market their solutions and services and to diversify their offerings to connect with key customers.
* Upgrades to enablement – new analytics tools are available to partners in the OPN Competency Centre, allowing partners to now have access to a global view of user enablement training and certifications across their entire company and the Oracle portfolio.
“There has never been a better time to be an Oracle Partner,” says Joel Borellis, group vice president, Partner Enablement, Oracle. “We continue to invest heavily in R&D and enablement resources to provide our partners the best technology, training and skills they need to succeed and profit.
“Today’s enhancements further allow our partners to take advantage of cutting-edge technologies, including the Oracle Cloud, Oracle Applications Cloud and Oracle Engineered Systems, to offer speed, efficiency and differentiated value to customers around the globe – and reward them for doing so.”
“The IT landscape continues to transform rapidly with the influx of new technologies and platforms encompassing the cloud, social, big data and mobility,” says Darren Bibby, VP of IDC Channels and Alliances Research.
“Oracle continues to refine its partner programmes to enable partners to become educated, Specialised and certified on these emerging technology trends – allowing them to differentiate their businesses and deliver better value to customers.”
“Enkitec was a very early Oracle Exadata Database Machine partner and we have driven more than 200 customer implementations worldwide,” says Wade Nicolas, president of Enkitec.
“With Oracle Exadata Database Machine we are able to provide our customers with a comprehensive, high-performance solution for their critical database workloads, as well as offer a support team whose focus is on providing complex data centre services that can help drive better value to our customers.”
Enkitec is a Specialised, Platinum-level member in Oracle PartnerNetwork.
“Banner by Ellucian running on the Oracle Exadata Database Machine performed exceptionally well in recent tests, enabling us to reach up to 19 times more registrations per hour and five times faster processing of higher education’s toughest load: peak concurrent student registration,” says Brian Knotts, senior vice president, chief architect, Ellucian. Ellucian is a Gold-level member in Oracle PartnerNetwork.