Oracle Transition Tastes Suite

oes Oracle have what it takes to sell small-business applications? The database powerhouse, which recently won its battle for business applications vendor PeopleSoft, aims to convince partners it does.

Oracle’s first step in persuading partners was the release of Oracle E-Business Suite Special Edition North America, priced at $2,000 per user. While that price is noteworthy, so is the fact that Oracle says the small-business package will be sold exclusively through an emerging network of reseller partners that can pursue businesses with up to $75 million in annual revenue.

So far, Oracle has signed up only three resellers out of the 37 in its pipeline—Lucidity Consulting Group, Plano, Texas; Core Services, Morristown, N.J.; and Whitbread Technology Partners, Stoneham, Mass.—which means that, for now, Special Edition is being sold almost entirely through Oracle’s own telesales agents.

“You are seeing us in a state of transition,” said Rauline Ochs, Oracle’s group vice president of North America Alliances and Channels. “We are moving as fast as we can to get from a hybrid, dual-coverage model to a partner-only model.”

Lucidity is a longtime Oracle implementer that has assumed a reseller’s role. General partner Mike Feldman said he welcomes the small-business addition to the Oracle lineup.

“It will be nice to be self-sufficient and not have to work with Oracle in these [small-business] deals,” he said. “The nature of the beast is that Oracle is large and bureaucratic. With these deals you need to be quick, nimble, show it, close it, get the paper on it.”

Feldman says he expects to see major business from the small-business space. The others agree. Core Services CEO Jim Bistis, for example, said his firm is already working on three implementations and has five in the pipeline. Whitbread, for its part, has begun receiving about three to four calls a week, according to its president, Joel D’Arcy.