Oracle: Partners key to our success

Oracle will make a number of announcements later this month designed to buff up and add to its current tools and training for channel partners.

The database, applications and middleware vendor will announce the moves at its OpenWorld conference due to take place in San Francisco from Oct. 22 to Oct. 26.

Indirect sales of its software continue to be very important for Oracle, says Doug Kennedy, vice president of worldwide alliances and channels at Oracle. “Partners are key to our success,” he said in a recent interview.

For the company’s fiscal 2006, which ended in May, Oracle derived 44 percent of its worldwide license revenue from sales by its 17,700-plus partners. The percentage of indirect sales has mostly risen over the past five years at Oracle up from a starting point of around 30 percent, Kennedy said.

However, fiscal 2006’s 44 percent was down on the previous year’s 47 percent, a slight dip, he said, due to a number of acquisitions. Some of the companies acquired, like Siebel, included sizeable direct sales forces. The ultimate goal is for Oracle to derive just under half of its total license revenue sales from its channel partners.

Oracle’s mix of direct and indirect sales is different around the world, with channel sales predominating in Asia-Pacific, accounting for 78 percent or higher of license revenue, Kennedy said.

With its new and revamped planned resources, Oracle is looking to address concerns voiced by partners.

In the past, Oracle brought out new releases of its applications and then built the training for the channel, Kennedy said. Going forward, Oracle plans to offer its partners access to more than 500 pre-release training courses for its applications. Oracle also plans to offer such courses for its non-application software in future.

Partners also criticized Oracle for its training being “incomplete and inconsistent across the world,” Kennedy said. Oracle is addressing that concern by building around 200 so-called “guided learning paths,” each containing 12 to 16 courses, so that partners can educate themselves on the vendor’s products. He expects the rollout of the new training will be complete within six months.

In fiscal 2006, Oracle’s focus was on how to better enable its systems integrator partners. In fiscal 2007, the emphasis is on ISVs (independent software vendors ), Kennedy said. Oracle currently has more than 8,500 ISVs.

Oracle is working to improve the content on its Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) portal, aimed at ISVs that are also developers. The company is also enhancing its OPN Solutions Catalog, which provides information about Oracle partners worldwide so it’ll be easier for say an ISV in France to find a systems integrator in the U.S., Kennedy said.

Oracle will also provide ISV Solutions Maps via OPN. The maps will give partners an overview of the software Oracle and some of its partners provide vertically in a given industry as well as horizontally across a particular technology. Oracle intends to release over 20 maps, starting with overviews of the communications industry and human capital management.