Oracle's Sweet Talk

That was the message from Oracle President Charles Phillips, who spoke to 150 executives from 50 systems integrator partners at the Oracle SI Executive Summit late last week.

"It's not a debate anymore. We can say we can do this on our own as much as we want, but we don't have enough troops to do it on our own," Phillips told attendees. "We have to get better at working with partners, get more efficient and educate you on our strategies. You have to hear where we are going and where we are not. And we have to hear your feedback."

Phillips said 47 percent of Oracle's revenue currently comes from the indirect channel, and he expects the channel to account for more than half of all business soon. "We are not perfect, but we have a good start under way," he said. "The key is the right attitude and objective, and we have that. It's now a matter of fine-tuning it."

Reaction to Phillips' promises was mixed.

"Our Oracle business is 110 percent on our own," said one vice president of a regional Oracle implementation company, who requested anonymity. "Even when we've brought business to Oracle, we end up competing against Oracle Consulting even more than before. [Phillips'] message is the same pitch they've given for five years."

In contrast, Mike Petruzzi, a partner at New York-based ThoughtDigital, said he's seen marked improvement in how Oracle works with partners. "Oracle is making a conscious effort to curtail growth of Oracle Consulting," he said. "For the first time, they are working evenly well with players of all sizes. They're even excited to work with regional implementation companies like ours."

Oracle's channel efforts will include a new Partner Management System, based on the same PRM module in the Oracle E-Business Suite. The phased U.S. rollout, expected to start in January, eventually will become a single partner hub for all programs and efforts, including lead routing and management, marketing and development funds, and joint engagement opportunities. The Oracle Partner Network also will boast hundreds of online training courses on the new version.

The summit, held at Oracle's headquarters in Redwood Shores, Calif., had the twin purpose of convincing systems integrators that Oracle means to play nice, as well as providing more details on the next major version of Oracle's business management applications for large enterprise customers.

Oracle E-Business Suite version 11i10, set to be released in the next two weeks, offers 2,100 new capabilities and new industry domain features that systems integrators can tap into.

"I came because it was advertised that Oracle will tell us about the features and functions of the new release," said Michael Tompros, an associate partner at Accenture.

That new version features a streamlined user interface, pre-built reports and built-in daily business-intelligence functions for building hundreds of realtime dashboards without the need of a separate data warehouse. It also now targets new industries, such as the public sector, health care, manufacturing, financial services, retail and consumer packaged goods, life sciences and communications.

Phillips highlighted the importance of this release. "Applications are strategic to us. They give us a multiplier effect that's different for any other company," he said. "Once we sell the applications, we can add innovations on top of it such as business-process outsourcing. That's the philosophy behind PeopleSoft. There's a lot more revenue associated with it than just maintenance."