Oracle offers OpenWorld 2007 preview 4 November, 2007 By Patricia Pickett

PromoPipeline Exclusive Channel Promotions Find Out How You Can Make Money Today! ENROLL FREE! >> Factory Direct Should Not be Cheaper William Vanderbilt - Innovative Learning Channels Cloud Ecosystem II: A Candid Conversation with Oracle Beth Vanni - Amazon Consulting Cloud Ecosystem: A Candid Conversation with Rackspace Hosting Beth Vanni - Amazon Consulting Channel Manager Compensation William Vanderbilt - Innovative Learning Channels Financial Expertise William Vanderbilt - Innovative Learning Channels

Doug Kennedy, the Redwood Shores, Calif.-based vendor's senior vice-president of worldwide alliances and channels, offered a glimpse into OpenWorld activities during a recent webcast. Although he did not provide too many specifics, he did say Oracle will discuss the launch of a set of new support opportunities for partners. "We will also be focusing on some partner resourcing and deliverables for software-as-a-service," to be specifically targeted at independent software vendors (ISVs), he said, adding that another key focus will be security enterprise search.

Apart from these announcements, Oracle has a number of activities planned for partners for OpenWorld, which is to take place in San Francisco in mid-November. Kennedy said he will host the general session for the Partner Forum on Sunday, November 11 from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. His session will recap Oracle's fiscal 2007 (FY07) partner achievements and cover objectives and key opportunities for partners this year.

"We will actually have some guest speakers coming in and talking specifically about the technical services and resources that Partner Technical Services provides to our partners' ecosystem," Kennedy said. In addition, Tony Kender, senior vice-president of the vendor's global SMB business unit, will talk about the adoption of Oracle Accelerate and will go over some of the available Business Accelerators.

From 1:45 to 3:45, Rauline Ochs, Oracle's senior vice-president of North America alliances and channels will host the Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) North America session, which will include an overview of last year and the outlook for fiscal 2008 from a continental perspective. The session will also include a guest keynote and discussions on North American go-to-market strategies and segmentation, as well as best practices for partners. It will wrap up with panel of partners that will share their best practices and experiences partnering with Oracle.

From 4:00 to 5:30 p.m., North American partners will be able to attend breakout sessions focused on more effective partnering with Oracle, whether they are application resellers, technology resellers, ISVs or applications system integrators. The North American partner Titan awards will be given out at 7:00 p.m.

Kennedy said that from Monday through Thursday, OpenWorld will include a variety of partner activities spanning theatre sessions and detailed sessions on licensing and financing. Oracle will also discuss the newest iteration of its Solutions Catalog, which was originally launched at OpenWorld last year and has since then seen adoption ramp up. Not only are resellers using the catalog to locate potential partners that can help them fulfill deals, but the Oracle sales force is turning to it to find the right partner for the right opportunity, "and we're seeing customers going to it...to identify systems integrators, ISV solutions and resellers in their area that they want to engage in opportunities," he said. Oracle will also hold informational and educational sessions around its Unbreakable Linux strategy.

Demonstration kiosks focused on OPN resources will be available throughout the conference, in addition to partner-only sessions. A number of Partner Pavilions will be set up throughout the two exhibit halls, including specialized pavilions focused on security, risk and compliance; Oracle's Siebel CRM On-Demand; and partner solutions.

Kennedy added that to ensure maximum visibility of the pavilions, "we are using a Virtual Partner Pavilion approach, which will highlight exhibitors across the exhibition halls that are at the event."