Oracle PartnerNetwork offers training, industry-specific resources

Oracle Corp. today expanded two of its PartnerNetwork programs, the latest move in an ongoing effort to give partners the same opportunities as its direct sales staff.

The Oracle PartnerNetwork Competency Center, previously offered only in Europe, is now available in North America, providing customized training curriculums for channel partners. The Oracle PartnerNetwork Industry Initiatives, which offer Oracle training courses and sales resources to partners who work in specific vertical markets, has also expanded. The program now covers 20 different industries, up from 12 previously.

Both programs are available to all Oracle PartnerNetwork members, at no additional cost, and are accessible on the network's online portal.

Employees at CD Group, an Oracle software reseller and technology partner in Norcross, Ga., already use the standard Guided Learning Paths that Oracle provides, vice president Don Landrum said.

"If they are enhancing those, it's all good for partners," he said.

Oracle has increased its partner training by 50% in the past year, thanks to the work of a task force formed two years ago that identified easy access to training as a problem in the channel, according to Doug Kennedy, the company's senior vice president of worldwide channels and alliances. Oracle has added more training courses, improved access to the courses and nearly doubled its number of training curriculum offerings, called Guided Learning Paths.

Oracle's revenue from products and services sold or co-sold by partners is up 50% this year, an improvement Kennedy partly attributes to better-trained partners. About 40% of Oracle's revenue came through partners, and of the other 60%, partners helped co-sell a "significant" amount, he said.

The Competency Center gives an assessment test to partners, then uses a content management system to analyze what Oracle training courses they have already taken and customize a curriculum called a Guided Learning Path. The paths are lists of courses that partners should take to function more effectively in their specific areas of business. Oracle internal salespeople and partners can also use the Competency Center to track their progress on the Guided Learning Paths.

Participating partners will have access to Oracle solutions kits, live and online training courses, webcasts with industry experts, industry discussion boards and additional sales and marketing resources.

Aerospace and defense, engineering and construction, financial services, healthcare, life sciences and the public sector are some of the vertical markets covered by the program. Landrum said his staff will be able to take advantage of the additional resources for working in the wholesale distribution and industrial manufacturing markets.

The Industry Initiatives are designed to give partners the same training, sales and marketing resources that Oracle's direct staff receives, Kennedy said.

Author: Colin Steele @ SearchITChannel.com

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Oracle to implement billing management for Sun Direct

Enterprise software solutions provider Oracle on Wednesday said it has bagged a contract from Sun Direct to implement its communications billing and revenue management, which would provide real-time billing for its Direct to Home (DTH) services.

The first phase of the project would be completed in 90 days, a Oracle statement said here. It would allow Sun to consolidate billing operations, enable powerful new service offerings and improve visibility into customer information across services.

With the implementation, Sun Direct would be able to accelerate service delivery and reduce time-to-market of new services and enhance operational efficiency, it said.

Source: economictimes.indiatimes.com

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Oracle eyes the supply chain

Oracle has turned its focus to providing end-to-end supply chain management (SCM) solutions as well as introducing a new pricing model to tap into companies with no IT department of their own capable of installing its enterprise software.

Speaking to journalists in Bangkok, Jasbir Singh, Oracle senior director for supply chain management in Asia Pacific, explained that the last major shakeup was the introduction of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems which took place 10 years ago. Today, these companies are now looking more at supply chain management to orchestrate the extended supply chain, which spans hundreds, if not thousands of suppliers and logistics partners. He added that procurement is not longer a function that was optimised in isolation.

Singh spoke of the evolution of technology companies such as Texas Instruments and Motorola as a good example of how the world has changed. In the past, research and development from design to manufacturing, testing, packaging and shipping used to be 100 percent done by the company. However, today, design may be done by Motorola, but production is often done by Taiwan Semiconductor (TSMC). Another company will do the slicing and packaging of the chips, another will then ship them to the distributors or end customers.

One reason for the change is that logistics used to be an insignificant fraction of the finished product. With today's razor thin margins, however, that figure is now closer to 30 percent.

Today companies like Dell, Nokia, Cisco and Apple have no in-house manufacturing capabilities. When Apple designs a new iPod, for example, the message goes out to a contract manufacturer which then announces the needs for components to 400 or more sub-contractors. Many of these need to secure supplies from their own suppliers and many supply parts to one another.

Procurement needs to be automated as much as possible so that the contract manufacturer can focus only on the few suppliers that say that they cannot meet the required schedule and find alternatives. "It is no longer a supply chain, but a supply network," he said.

Oracle has recently acquired G-Log and Demantra and today claims to be the only software vendor that has an end-to-end SCM suite. Oracle claims that Demantra runs as well on SAP's Netweaver as it does on Fusion.

For the local market, ICE Solution is one of the major system integrator partners that will be preaching the SCM vision to local companies alongside the very popular warehouse management and transportation management solutions, which continue to be in demand.

Oracle says it is going to tap more Thai companies through new BPO (business process outsourcing) pricing. In the past, many system integrators and partners have offered Software as a Service (SaaS) type solutions by buying Oracle software outright and then billing their customers on a per use or per transaction basis. With the new BPO pricing, Oracle will charge the SI with bills settled each month. BPO pricing will start with Human Resources and Logistics software but with the door open for SCM.

One of the reasons for the popularity of hosted solutions is the acute shortage of IT personnel in the Thai market, according to Oracle.

Author: DON SAMBANDARAKSA @ www.bangkokpost.com

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