ORACLE OPENWORLD, SAN FRANCISCO – September 20, 2010
News Facts
The Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) Forum activities kicked off a week of partner programming and networking opportunities at Oracle OpenWorld for Oracle partners.
A record 2,000 partners from around the globe attended Sunday’s OPN Forum, assembling to learn more about the benefits of specialization, new OPN resources and programs, and how to learn, grow and profit with Oracle.
Judson Althoff, Oracle’s Senior Vice President of Worldwide Alliances & Channels and Embedded Sales, jumpstarted the week’s programming by thanking partners for their continued excellence – which was marked by record performance for Oracle. Althoff also applauded the rapid global adoption of the OPN Specialized program. First introduced at the OPN Forum last year, the program already features more than 50 specialization options, 200 specialized partners, 25,000 certified OPN specialists and 5,000 implementation specialists.
In addition, Althoff announced new elements to the OPN program including new the opportunity to achieve advanced Specialization and a new Diamond membership level.
Partners including Arrow, Avnet, Datalink, Enkitec, and Opitz Consulting joined Althoff on stage to share their stories with the OPN Specialized program.
Oracle President, Safra Catz, thanked partners for their continued commitment to joint success and further outlined how Oracle’s strategy of offering a complete stack- from application-to-disk – creates new opportunities and benefits for the partner community.
In a surprise appearance, Oracle President, Mark Hurd, addressed Oracle partners for the first time and emphasized the vast services opportunity for Oracle partners and shared his initial thoughts about how best channel partners can engage and grow with Oracle.
Althoff closed the session with a call to action for partners to recognize the opportunity in the complete Oracle portfolio, to get specialized and to engage and sell the stack.
Afternoon breakout sessions provided specific content addressing priorities for the Asia Pacific (APAC), Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), Latin America (LAD), and North America (NAS) regions. Annual partner awards for each region were also announced.
Partners also had the opportunity to participate in special interest group sessions (SIGs) around specific product lines, including Oracle Exadata, Oracle Database, Oracle Fusion Middleware, Oracle Solaris, Linux, and Virtualization, Oracle Primavera, Oracle JD Edwards, and partner opportunities in Cloud and SaaS; amongst others.
Supporting Quotes
• “There is no better time to be an Oracle partner,” said Althoff. “We have worked tirelessly with our partner community to turn our technologies into solutions and enable our partners to provide the value-added services behind those solutions. Being able to deliver on these services is the greatest source of profitability for our Value-Added Reseller partners. And with more than 300,000 Oracle customers that are not using Oracle hardware this represents a huge opportunity for our partner base.”
“Thank you to all our partners who’ve helped make our success possible. Thank you for the time you have spent, the investment you have made and the support you have provided our joint customers,” said Safra Catz, President, Oracle. “While we have a broad and deep product line – and our partners make it a complete solution for customers. The call to action for partners is to specialize, focus, invest and expand. Customers are thirsty for expertise and we can never fulfill all their needs. Advantage yourself by becoming specialized on what you are expert on. There is a whole world of opportunity out there for us together. With hard work, focus and specialization no one can catch you in the market.”
“Services represent a big opportunity for partners to make money,” said Mark Hurd, President, Oracle. “Oracle is a product company. Partners have the ability to specialize across the portfolio to build services around it and grow in markets we don’t get to – with complete solutions we don’t have in our basket. When they do, they will find a supportive Oracle ready to help them succeed. When we align products and solutions as a group, we become more powerful.”
Supporting Resources
Oracle PartnerNetwork at Oracle OpenWorld (www.oracle.com/us/openworld/oracle-partnernetwork-073447.html)
Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) (www.oracle.com/partners/032191.htm)
OPN Specialized (www.oracle.com/partners/en/opn-program/index.htm)
Judson Althoff blog (blogs.oracle.com/judsonalthoff/)
Connect with the Oracle Partner community at OPN on Twitter (twitter.com/oraclepartners) , OPN on Facebook (www.facebook.com/oraclepartners) , OPN on LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1935017) , and OPN on YouTube (www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=2CF00D9A9A734772) .
About Oracle
Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) is the world's most complete, open, and integrated business software and hardware systems company. For more information about Oracle, please visit our Web site at www.oracle.com.
About Oracle PartnerNetwork
Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) Specialized is the latest version of Oracle's partner program that provides partners with tools to better develop, sell and implement Oracle solutions. OPN Specialized offers resources to train and support specialized knowledge of Oracle products and solutions and has evolved to recognize Oracle growing product portfolio, partner base and business opportunity. Key to the latest enhancements to OPN is the ability for partners to differentiate through Specializations. Specializations are achieved through competency development, business results, expertise and proven success. To find out more visit www.oracle.com/partners.
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Contact Info
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Carol Sato
Oracle
+1.650.633.5551
carol.sato@oracle.com
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Kristin Reeves
Blanc & Otus
+1.415.856.5145
kreeves@blancandotus.com (mailto:kreeves@blancandotus.com)
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