Oracle Ramps Up Early Product Training For VARs

Oracle's next product wave will include Project Genesis Siebel-Oracle integration wares and Oracle E-Business Suite 12. Siebel 8, due this year, will support Linux.

The Redwood Shores, Calif., company is turning up the heat on training for all those offerings so that partners will be able to hit the ground running when code is available.

"We want to get rid of the latency between getting our partners trained and when we go [to general availabil-ity]—that's key," said Doug Kennedy, Oracle's vice president of worldwide channels and alliances. "That's one of the biggest things partners keep telling us to do."

Oracle also will include select third-party ISV products in its solutions catalog. One partner applauded the news. "This training is important for both the ISV community as well as Oracle," said Deke Johnson, president of Aware Technologies, a reseller and integrator in San Carlos, Calif.

"My hopes are that Oracle will allocate similar training to the VAR community, as it is often the VAR community who drives the initial business," Johnson said.

Company executives also will talk about Oracle's emerging All Partner Territories (APTs). As previously reported by CRN, in these territories, all database and middleware sales to companies with up to $1 billion in revenue are to flow through partners. Named accounts are not included, and that's a pretty big exception, VARs said.

"In theory, this is a very good program for partners," said Dan Mori, vice president of Oracle partner FusionStorm, San Francisco.

The first APT was rolled out in New England last year. Oracle then added Northern California, New Jersey and Wisconsin/Iowa on Sept. 1. The goal is for partners and Oracle field forces to act in concert to grow sales of products and services to SMBs.

"We're looking at the local level for partners who will increase their investment and put resources behind our technology," said Dale Weideling, vice president of channel sales for commercial technology at Oracle.

Another goal is to bolster solution selling—and solutions require not just databases and middleware, but applications, often from outside ISVs. Toward that end, Oracle is unveiling a new solutions catalog intended to offer deep, well-targeted resources for the geographic and industry-specific needs of customers and partners.

Launching next week with information for the communications and human capital management industries, the catalog will eventually extend to more than 20 industries.

Oracle is relying on a few advantages to advance its APT strategy. It's banking that Linux will win in small businesses and also that some Microsoft partners, weary of low product margins and sometimes vicious partner-vs.-partner competition in the Microsoft world, will push SQL Server specialists to the Oracle camp. Some Microsoft partners are "tired of the saturation in the Microsoft ecosystem," Kennedy told CRN.

On the other hand, some longtime Oracle channel hands say the investment Oracle wants from them in terms of trained sales and service reps make ROI on this program tenuous at best. "It costs $200,000 minimum to bring on the type of rep they want me to have, and I just don't see payback," one partner said.

Oracle applications partner Chris Rapp, executive vice president of sales and marketing at Apex IT, Minneapolis, said he would love to see Oracle extend the model to applications—especially if Oracle opens up deals in midmarket companies with revenue above $100 million and lets sales go through on partner paper. Oracle has made limited moves in that direction. "I'd love it, but I don't see it happening," he said. "They make their bread and butter there."

Some partners note that Oracle's plans have a Darwinian effect in the channel.

"Only a few partners are going to survive in a given patch—I don't know whether that's two or 20. There's going to be a natural selection of partners who want to step up," said Darren Bibby, analyst at IDC.

Bibby said one partner he'd talked with was cautiously optimistic. "They didn't say the channel conflict has totally gone away, but they said it was a night-and-day difference. It used to be that they'd compete with Oracle direct sales, which had their own designs on the customer—the customer was often left figuring out the situation. Oracle and the partner made their problems the customer's problem," he said.

Oracle also will detail product road maps and continue fending off FUD about Fusion, its new "big bang" applications line due to begin arriving in 2008.

Partners say Fusion remains confusing, though Rapp said customers began buying again once Oracle announced its Applications Unlimited strategy, promising continued updates to PeopleSoft, Siebel, J.D. Edwards and Oracle's own E-Business Suite, even after Fusion's launch.

"A lot of our customers who were holding off on upgrades said, 'The heck with it, I'll upgrade,' " Rapp said.