Oracle Offers Training For Accelerate Apps Resellers

Oracle has launched a new training program for channel partners that sell the vendor's Accelerate applications to midsize customers. The new Oracle Accelerate Academy offers training for solution providers in marketing, selling and implementing Accelerate software.

Oracle's Accelerate solutions are applications pre-configured for midsize businesses (those with less than $500 million in annual sales) in specific industries: Altogether, the company has some 200 Accelerate solutions covering 19 industries and 48 industry segments. The products are designed to be rapidly installed by resellers on a fixed-scope, fixed-cost basis.

Working with high-volume, fixed-cost implementation projects is a major change for some resellers, said Tony Kender, senior vice president of Oracle's global accelerate program office. "For some solution providers, that's a major shift in their business model. We want to take partners that haven't made that jump yet and help them make it."

Oracle Accelerate Academy extends the existing Oracle PartnerNetwork boot camp curriculum with courses specific to the Accelerate line. The new curriculum includes what Oracle calls "guided learning paths" to help Accelerate partners improve their competency in sales, marketing and system implementation. Accelerate Academy also offers a jump-start program with training and demand-generation support for resellers of JD Edwards applications, and hardware product training for Oracle software resellers who want to sell complete solutions.

The new program provides PetroNet, an Oracle reseller in the oil and gas industry based in Laguna Niguel, Calif., with an opportunity to further train the solution provider's sales and implementation teams, said CEO Caroline Santora, in a statement.

While Oracle has offered Accelerate training before now, the academy program formalizes the courses into a more complete curriculum, Kender said. Most of the training is offered to Accelerate partners for free.

In September at its annual Oracle OpenWorld conference Oracle announced a major expansion of its partner training efforts under the banner Oracle Partner Enablement 2.0.