New Strategies and Programs Help Oracle Partners Expand

REDWOOD SHORES, CA--(Marketwired - Jun 25, 2014) - Oracle ( NYSE : ORCL )

News Summary Today, Oracle welcomed its partners around the globe to the annual Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) kickoff, where it provided them with the strategies, insights, and resources they need to succeed and profit with Oracle in the current fiscal year. Hosted by Oracle executives, the live, virtual session unveiled new OPN enablement resources, including new incentive programs, designed to help partners innovate faster, service customers better, differentiate themselves in the market and grow their businesses with Oracle.

"We are celebrating the successes of our partner community and the vast contribution they make to both Oracle and our customers worldwide. We are also arming them with the strategies, technology and programs they need to continue to succeed, innovate and build a better, more profitable business with Oracle," said Rich Geraffo, senior vice president, Worldwide Alliances and Channels, Oracle.

News Facts

• At its sixth annual Oracle PartnerNetwork global kickoff event today, Oracle executives outlined key strategies, insights, and programs designed to help Oracle's 25,000 partners grow and profit in fiscal year 2015 (FY2015).
• Enhanced OPN enablement resources announced include the availability of additional Oracle Exastack certifications, enriched incentive programs, and a mobile-ready OPN Solutions Catalog.
• Oracle's partners continue to find success and marketplace differentiation through the OPN Specialized program. Currently, more than 5,000 partners have obtained OPN Specialized status in more than 44,000 Specializations.
• Today, partners have the ability to become OPN Specialized in more than 150 available technology, application, solution, and industry certification areas including Oracle Fusion Applications, cloud and Oracle engineered systems offerings, which are all seeing rapid adoption.
• The number of new certification specialists alone has grown 10 percent in the past fiscal year, bringing the total to more than 120,000 certified specialists worldwide.
• To view a replay of the Oracle PartnerNetwork kickoff, visit: http://bit.ly/1pgDjXL

Incentivizing Strategic Partner Selling

• The OPN Incentive Program, which offers partners rebates on select Oracle technologies and rewards partners for investing in areas strategic to Oracle, was designed for broad market success and to provide partners the opportunity to acquire new customers and close larger deals, while gaining greater margins.
• In FY2015, the OPN Incentive Program is enhancing the way it pays partner rebates, moving from quarterly to monthly payments and significantly shortening the cycle time it takes to process payments. This new payment system will go into effect with FY2015 business.
• Oracle is also increasing focus on sales for partners who are selling Oracle on Oracle solutions and simplifying the way partners can earn rebates when they do so.
• Oracle's Virtual Compute Appliance , an integrated, software-defined converged infrastructure system designed to run virtually any application and to support cloud services, has also been added to the Strategic Product List, enabling partners to receive incremental rebates when selling this product in the broad market.

Extending Partner Opportunity with Oracle Cloud

• Oracle Cloud breaks down traditional cloud and business process silos by offering the broadest selection of enterprise-grade cloud solutions, including Oracle Applications, platform, and infrastructure services, allowing partners to deploy clouds solutions however their customers choose, both on-premises or on a subscription basis.
• Today, more than 15,000 individuals have achieved Oracle Cloud specialist certifications and 600 partners have achieved Cloud Specializations.
• Oracle's success relies on partners' ability to sell and implement Oracle Cloud services in the broad market, and as such Oracle will continue to invest more resources in helping partners maximize their cloud-based opportunities in FY2015.
• On this front, OPN is announcing a new two-tier distribution program for the Oracle Cloud portfolio, engaging the value added distributor (VAD) network to extend Oracle's reach in the broad market and scale its network of Oracle Cloud resellers.
• Through the program, Oracle will work with VADs to identify and enable partners best suited to deliver customer value in cloud implementation and managed services.

Partners Driving Customer Success with Oracle Engineered Systems

• With data growing at unprecedented levels, application providers need a robust, scalable and high-performance infrastructure to manage and analyze data at the speed of business.
• Today, more than 1,375 independent software vendor (ISV) applications are supported with Oracle engineered systems and have achieved an Oracle Exastack Ready status, and more than 200 ISV applications have achieved an Oracle Exastack Optimized status.
• Today, OPN is extending the Oracle Exastack program to include Oracle Database Appliance and Oracle Big Data Appliance Ready and Optimized options.
• For more information visit: http://bit.ly/1nxhdKZ

Driving New Opportunity with Enhanced OPN Solutions Catalog

• At the event, Oracle officially unveiled the new, mobile-enabled OPN Solutions Catalog .
• More than 30,000 customers a month search the OPN Solutions Catalog to find the right partner and solutions for their unique needs.
• The new catalog makes it even easier for customers to search for partners anytime, from anywhere.

Supporting Quotes

• "Our customers are looking for a partner that can deliver an enterprise-grade cloud infrastructure for their business and our Cloud Specializations prove that Keste has the expertise they need to deliver the digital enterprise and create business value," said Sri Ayyeppen, Keste chief technology officer. "From early on, Oracle has invested in technology partners like Keste to take command in the emerging cloud market. Our Cloud Application and Cloud Builder Specializations showcase our depth of knowledge of the Oracle Cloud platform and our commitment to be a leading Oracle partner for cloud infrastructure and integration services."
• "With a proliferation of data, connecting everything, and real-time demands -- there is no doubt that we are living in interesting times when it comes to IT," said Darren Bibby, vice-president of IDC Channels and Alliances Research. "All of this change means that channel organizations need to be able to quickly jump on new technology trends, be it social, mobile, big data or others, to help their partners adopt and become successful as quickly as possible. Oracle continues to do a good job advancing its partner programs to enable partners with the resources they need to capitalize on these market opportunities and deliver value to customers."

Supporting Resources

• Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN)
• Oracle PartnerNetwork Blog
• Connect with the Oracle Partner community at OPN on Twitter , OPN on Facebook , OPN on LinkedIn and OPN on YouTube .

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's 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: http://www.oracle.com/partners .

About Oracle Oracle engineers hardware and software to work together in the cloud and in your data center. For more information about Oracle ( NYSE : ORCL ), visit www.oracle.com .

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