New Opportunities from Oracle Cloud Partner Programs

During the recent OpenWorld 2012 conference, Oracle unveiled new opportunities for partners with new cloud partner programs. These programs have the good intention to allow existing and new partners to further capitalize on Oracle products by leveraging on the cloud computing trends.

In a nutshell, these programs are:
  • Oracle Cloud Builder Specialization: New enablement resources provide partners who are selling and implementing Oracle’s hardware and software offerings with the expertise, tools and training they need to achieve a cloud-based Specialization. With the Specialization, partners are able to differentiate their services in the marketplace and showcase their expertise to customers based on their private cloud building capabilities.
  • Oracle Cloud Referral Program: Through the program, any of Oracle’s 25,000 OPN members can receive compensation for Oracle Cloud business referred to Oracle.
  • Oracle Cloud Specialization Featuring RapidStart: Created in conjunction with Oracle development and consulting, RapidStart Cloud Specializations enable partners to deliver their own fixed-scope implementation offerings to get customers up and running on the Oracle Cloud based on proven best practices and methodologies.
  • Oracle Cloud Resale Program: Qualifying Specialized partners will have the opportunity to resell Oracle Cloud services, creating a sustainable new revenue stream over the lifetime of their customer’s Oracle Cloud subscription.
  • Oracle Platform Services for ISVs: ISVs can leverage a secure, flexible architecture to build and deploy new applications, or extend existing on-premise offerings to the Oracle Cloud without any additional infrastructure and platform investments to eliminate costly IT resources and accelerate time-to-market.

The Oracle Cloud Specialization Featuring RapidStart program is a high level program for big partners who have the own product offerings. It is analogous to the concept of OEM for manufacturing where partners are granted the Intellectual property of Oracle Cloud offering to incorporate with their own products and offerings.

Software Developers

Software developers may want to take advantage of the Oracle Platform Services for ISV which allows partners to deploy applications and services on top of Oracle cloud offerings.

The Oracle Cloud is an offering which provides infrastructure, platform and applications with built-in social media features. This means that developers can benefit from the IaaS,PaaS and SaaS features similar to what other competitors are offering, such as Amazon Web Service (IaaS + PaaS), Microsoft Windows Azure (PaaS), RedHat Openshift (PaaS), Google App Engine (PaaS), Engine Yard (PaaS) and etc

In terms of PaaS (Platform-as-a-service), the Oracle cloud also provides developers with tools for collaboration, source code management, documentation and Java development tools. Nevertheless, this is still under preview and not yet opened for beta stage. Hence, no further information on API is available for now.

“We are announcing an unprecedented new opportunity for partners with Oracle Cloud,” said Judson Althoff, Senior Vice President Worldwide Alliances and Channels, Oracle. “With the ability to implement, develop on or resell Oracle Cloud, partners can deliver new leading services and solutions to go to market faster and more efficiently, growing their business opportunities and profits with Oracle.”

The Oracle cloud is powered by Oracle Exadata Database Machine and Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud and the cloud partner program is part of the Oracle Partner Network.

It is also a common thing for partners to team up with Oracle team to develop vertical solutions with industry-oriented capabilities to the marketplace.

Hitachi

During OpenWorld 2012, Hitachi, Ltd. has been named a Diamond level partner, the highest ranking available, in the Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) Specialized program.

Hitachi is committed to helping clients bring their business visions to life through industry led services and solutions. The company’s client base includes 35 percent of the Fortune 100 and 25 percent of the Global 100, along with many mid-market leaders.

For more than two decades, Hitachi has helped clients maximize the business benefits of their Oracle Applications. Through more than 2,300 trained professionals worldwide, Hitachi provides a full spectrum of business consulting services, from pure systems implementations to assessments, upgrades, project management, change management, training and support, and systems management/hosting.

Hitachi has achieved 29 Oracle Specializations and five Advanced Specializations, with a number of additional in progress. Hitachi’s Advanced Specializations include Oracle E-Business Suite Financial Management, Oracle E-Business Suite Supply Chain Management, Oracle’s Siebel CRM, Java Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE), and Oracle Database. Currently Hitachi Consulting is the first Diamond partner to achieve a Specialization in Oracle’s Agile Product Lifecycle Management (PLM). In addition, Hitachi Consulting has numerous other Specializations in Oracle Applications, Oracle Technology, Oracle Systems, and Oracle industries.

Specialization & Training

To date, more than 4,600 Oracle partners have become Specialized with 11 Diamond level partners, representing over 21,000 individual Specializations, and 29,000 certified specialists worldwide. Next fiscal year, to achieve Diamond level status, partners must complete 30 Specializations, 10 Advanced Specializations and generate $100 million in Oracle co-sell and re-sell.

Helping partners fully leverage all of the enablement tools they need to achieve Specialization, Oracle recently launched the OPN Specialized Activation Center, a centralized collection of OPN training resources that includes extensive training offerings for Oracle Fusion Applications.

The training sessions are an essential stepping stone towards partners reaching OPN Specialization in Oracle Fusion Applications – which will allow them to differentiate their services in the market and showcase their expertise to customers.

Already, more than 200 partners are pursuing Oracle Fusion Applications Specializations, leveraging more than 1,000 free online implementation-focused and 23 instructor-led training courses available through the OPN Knowledge Zone and Oracle University.

In all, OPN members have consumed more than 18,000 hours of free online learning courses for Oracle Fusion Applications.

In addition, six Oracle Fusion Applications Certified Implementation Specialist exams are available, including Oracle Fusion Human Capital Management, Oracle Fusion Financials, and Oracle Fusion Customer Relationship Management. Oracle Fusion Supply Chain Management and Oracle Fusion Procurement Presales and Sales training and assessments are also available.

Oracle has already trained and certified over 2,000 consultants to sell and implement Oracle Fusion Applications and nearly 500 individuals completed Oracle Fusion Applications exams during the beta phase.


Who is who ?

Oracle also announced winners of the 2012 Oracle Excellence Award for Specialized Partner of the Year -North America to key partners who are:

Partner: Category:
KPI Partners BI Applications
Apex IT Customer Relationship Management
Infosys Limited Financial Management/EPM
Infosys Limited Human Capital Management Solution
Deloitte Consulting LLP Supply Chain Management & Manufacturing
Deloitte Consulting LLP Global SI Apps Momentum
KPIT Reg SI/Reseller Apps Momentum
Cloud Creek Systems, Inc. Database and Clustering
eVerge Group / Fadel Partners, Inc Comms, Media & Entertainment
Deloitte Consulting LLP Consumer & Retail
Rolta Education
PwC Financial Services
PwC Health & Life Sciences
Deloitte Consulting LLP Manufacturing & Distribution
Deloitte Consulting LLP Oil & Gas
TechDemocracy Public Sector
ADI Strategies Services
Accenture Utilities
PwC Industry Momentum
MarketSphere Consulting, LLC BI and Data Warehousing
Deloitte Consulting LLP Cloud Computing
TechDemocracy Integration and SOA
PwC Security & Identity Management
Keste WebCenter
Accenture GSI Technology momentum
Predictive Technologies, Inc. Reg SI/Reseller Tech Momentum
Cintra Software & Services Oracle Data Appliance
Cloud Creek Systems, Inc. Oracle-on-Oracle
Maplesoft Technology Server and Storage
Accenture Engineered Systems Momentum
Maplesoft Technology Hardware Momentum

Through this listing, we can find out who is who and what they are doing in the OPN.

This tells me that if you are an expert in specific enterprise business domain, it maybe a good idea to partner with Oracle to up-sell technologies to your existing market.

Jimmy Cheah, Oracle Malaysia Country Manager said that Oracle is actively recruiting new partners particularly those with industry knowledge to join the value-creation ecosystem.

“Oracle is the pioneer of the cloud, you can’t build cloud without Oracle,” said Judson Althoff in reference to Network Computer which was pioneered by Oracle, collaborating with Sun Microsystems and IBM for hardware. Nonetheless, Oracle wasn’t the first to evangelist on the concept of cloud which was made popular by Google who had hope to own the web space in order to compete with rival Microsoft by transforming computing processes from desktop to the cloud.

Anyway, this was yesterday’s story as everybody has already embraced cloud in a full fledged manner including Microsoft.

Good luck making big bucks with Oracle!!!

Comments

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