Oracle Previews OpenWorld, Announces Partner Awards

This week, the new-look Oracle will unveil its plans for the coming year to a wide range of customers and partners at its OpenWorld conference in San Francisco. On Sunday, the company gave a group of select partners a preshow taste of what's to come.

Partners attending the event--roughly 35,000 in total, of which approximately 3,000 are channel partners--say they are curious to see how they will be able to work with the suddenly huge company, which bought PeopleSoft/JD Edwards last year and stunned many in the industry last week with the announcement of its plan to buy Siebel Systems as well.

"We've been a successful PeopleSoft ISV for years, and we'd like to know how best to team up with Oracle across multiple vertical markets," says Christine Bennett, a software developer for Chelmsford, Mass.-based Kronos.

Led by president Charles Phillips, the Oracle team yesterday outlined the themes for the coming week that will help companies like Kronos do just that. Noting that the company now gets more than half of its revenue through the channel, Phillips says partners are more important to Oracle than ever.

"We now have about 15,000 partners and 7,500 ISVs, and given all the areas we have to cover now, there's no way we can do it alone," he said.

Long viewed as primarily an enterprise-focused company, Oracle intends to spend a big chunk of the conference pitching itself as a midmarket-friendly middleware vendor.

"We have more than 26,000 middleware customers, and if I had to pick one category we'll be emphasizing more than the others this week, that would be it," Phillips said.

Among the announcements Oracle will make at the show are plans for Oracle Fusion middleware architecture, which includes the unveiling of "hot pluggable" middleware solutions, and the extension of lifetime support for the technology it has recently acquired. The company also will debut version 3 of its grid-computing architecture as well as extend the on-demand capabilities of its PeopleSoft and JD Edwards solutions, which it presumably also intends to do down the road with Siebel.

The executives tacitly acknowledged the mixed reviews Oracle has received in the past from some partners, promising to institute more programs designed to attract more VARs, ISVs and systems integrators, and help make their existing partners more profitable and productive.

"A fundamental change over the next six months will be in designing marketing campaigns with partners in mind," said Doug Kennedy, who has been Oracle's vice president of alliances and channels since June. "We want to be the partner of choice in applications, databases and on the new fronts."

Rauline Ochs, group vice president of North American channels and alliances, said her division has made great strides since she assumed control about 18 months ago.

"It has been about being more predictable and reliable, and our channel focus has provided the base for everything we do," she says. "On top of that, we've been able to provide more ROI and drive new opportunities [for partners]."

Like the other executives, Ochs stressed the burgeoning middleware opportunity that exists for all Oracle partners, one that has been dramatically enhanced by the company's acquisition spree.

"Look into Fusion middleware; if you can't do it on your own, we'll team you up with other partners who can help you develop the right skills," she said. "We offer more opportunities and more territory for partners than any other software vendor in the industry."

Later on Sunday, Oracle announced the winners of its 2005 North American Titan awards, given to outstanding individual solutions and to partners for overall performance in various categories. The winners:

Solution of the Year 2005

1. Application Server: SunGard SCT higher education solution

2. Collaboration and Integration: Enterprise Business Solutions, for leveraging Oracle Collaboration Suite 10g and several other Oracle products

3. Database: Fair Isaacis Network Assurance Analytics solution

4. Industry ISV: MHC Software, Document Express Secure eCheck Courier solution

5. Industry SI: Mi Services Group, repeatable Electronic Record and Signature solution

6. Public Sector: EnvironMax, Project Chemsure RFID tag solution

7. Small-to-Medium Sized Business: Egenera, BladeFrame system running Oracle Real Application Clusters for online retailers

Partner of the Year 2005

1. Applications: Accenture

2. Global Systems Integrator: IBM Business Consulting Services

3. Independent Software Vendor: Fidelity Information Services

4. JD Edwards: CSS

5. Excellence : Computer Sciences Corp.

6. PeopleSoft: CedarCrestone, Deloitte Consulting

7. Regional SI: Hitachi Consulting

8. Technology: HP

9. Value-Added Reseller: Mythics