Oracle PartnerNetwork Forum
I attend a lot of vendor partner conferences in a year. I listen to the presentations by executives, have several one-on-ones to dig into the details and meet with about a hundred partners. My participation typically that means I’ll be writing an industry brief on the direction of the partner program and the profitability of their partners, be quoted in the press and be talking with the executive team and innovative ideas for increasing partner satisfaction. I’ve been thinking about the PartnerNetwork Forum I attended on Sunday as part of Oracle OpenWorld for a couple days, because I don’t want to sound too critical. They’ve certainly come a long way from the Oracle of 5 years ago when then didn’t even have a partner gathering and they are doing some great work. I guess my evaluations are clouded by the major channel companies (Microsoft, Cisco, IBM).
Oracle OpenWorld is an end-user conference, drawing about 40,000 people into San Francisco. They take over all three halls of Moscone Center and every other open space in that area for a week (yes, including blocking one of the main thoroughfare’s for the locals). The PartnerNetwork Forum feels like its just tacked on to this major, yearly, global event. The partner event was held Sunday, before the official launch of OpenWorld and it was held in the ballroom of the Marriott across the street. The partner event was small for the size of Oracles revenues, only about 2,000 people attended (not including the Oracle people) and it didn’t really seem to be discussing global issues.
As I said, I’m likely too critical by comparing this to my past partner summit experiences, but it definitely seemed to be a side thought. Safra Catz, president and CFO, did make a 5 minute appearance to say ‘thank you’ to the partners. Doug Kennedy, the VP of global channels and alliances, kicked off the event and was the MC. But there was no key note by the president or CEO and more than half the day was spent discussing North America issues. We in the channel community certainly wrote our fair share when Sam Palmisano didn’t make an appearance at last years’ PartnerWorld (which he rectified this year).
Anyway, globalness and grandeur aside the parade of Oracle executives did have some exciting and innovative information to share. In 2007 Oracle extended and matured the Oracle PartnerNetwork (the program benefits), increased partner enablement and training, doubled the number of business development activities with partners and streamlined the Oracle business practices for Oracle’s 19,500 partners worldwide.
I’ll have more specifics in the brief later this month, but Oracle talked about two interesting programs in particular. The Oracle Accelerate program is a combination of applications, business implementation tools and partner services to provide complete solutions that are industry focused. Partners that register and are Accelerate Approved close more transactions by selling fixed bid, fixed scope projects. The other program Oracle discussed is a VAD re-marketer program. Funny name aside, it’s a new class of Oracle reseller that is focused on the mid-market and has absolutely no direct affiliation with Oracle. They don’t sign up for the PartnerNetwork program, pay the fees or get any benefits from Oracle. They are only able to resell the Oracle standard edition and standard edition one products (database, application server and business intelligence) at standard terms and conditions through Oracle’s distributors. You can tune into the Amazon Consulting “Leveraging two-tier distribution” web seminar on Wednesday (or listen to the recorded playback) where Oracle will be our special guest and will be discussing their distribution partners and programs.
Both of these programs were not new per se, but were gaining momentum and increased focus by Oracle in 2008. The 2008 Oracle partner goals and objectives include driving revenue growth for partners through increased marketing activities, enhancing partner enablement and training, increasing the partner-to-partner networking opportunities and continued enhancement of Oracle’s Partner Model. Oracle also provided a sneak peak into the OpenWorld announcements around the Application Integration Architecture program for Partners, a multi-vendor support initiative and Software-as-a-Service solutions. It will be interesting to see how Oracle incorporates the partners in the SaaS solutions.
The partners I talked to at the awards dinner and the after party believe Oracle has certainly come a long way in their partnering friendliness. Rauline Ochs, SVP of North America Channels and Alliances has been recognized by CMP as both the Channel Chief of the Year and one of the Top 25 Executives of 2007. They’ve made great strides in engaging and empowering partners and opening up the products to distribution. However the partners still see a few challenges ahead with Oracle’s infrastructure systems, culture and continued conflict in at the field level. As the party wore on the partners got more excited about the opportunities with Oracle. The pre-announcement of the virtualization product certainly helped the partner’s mood, almost as much as the champagne.