ShadowRAM: September 26, 2005

But Larry Ellison was yet again a no-show, at least publicly, for the partner day. It was up to Charles Philips and other Oracle execs to show some channel love.

One savvy Microsoft Axapta partner, Iteration2, wanted the crowds to see him stick his Axapta marketing in Oracle&s eye. Iteration2&s mobile truck circled the venue in San Francisco last week. The theme: It&s time to learn about the Microsoft ERP solution Oracle doesn&t want you to know about.

Dana Carvey&s opening-day comedy set made some Oracleans nervous. He joked about Ellison and co-President Safra Catz having a child together. Talk about your PR nightmare.

The other head-turning event was Tod Neilsen&s big splash during partner day. Tod had previous lives at Microsoft—doing database analyst relations stuff back in the Access/Foxpro glory days, then minding the D.C. press corps during the antitrust saga. More recently, Neilsen was at BEA. For industry old-timers, the sight of witnessing Tod in an expensive suit addressing the masses, praising Oracle, was quite a shock to the system.

Hewlett-Packard executives said back in July that the company plans to integrate key HP enterprise solution providers into the Technology Solutions Group&s end-user sales force come Nov. 1, the start of its fiscal 2006. HP said at the time it was evaluating partners that sell Alpha and HP-UX servers and enterprise-class storage. After that exercise, it will map designated partners into the sales plan. The plan was well-received, but as of last week, several large HP enterprise partners had yet to hear how or if they will be part of that strategy.

That&s a big problem for this crew because they&re already busy developing their own business plans for the upcoming year and need to know HP&s intentions so they can adjust strategy and resources accordingly. It also could be a big problem for HP. Some solution providers say many TSG enterprise sales reps that opted for HP&s early retirement program aren&t being replaced.

Finally, Acer is taking steps to reduce its investment in monitor maker BenQ. Acer President Gianfranco Lanci told a group of European journalists earlier this month that the company plans to cut its share in BenQ to 5 percent over the next six to 12 months. (Acer already sells LCD monitors in the United States.) Its new plan would put it direct competition with BenQ. Again.