The word from Oracle to Sun VARs is they need to join the Oracle Partner Network (OPN), although some of the specifics remain sketchy.

A July 27 article by CRN's Scott Campbell says that Oracle hasn’t finalized its plans for bringing Sun VARs into the OPN but quotes Tom Wagner, Oracle's group vice president of North America hardware alliances and channels, as relaying more help from VARs is needed.

“Despite the fact we continue to invest in direct sales, the selling capacity required to [reach those accounts], we’d run out of cycles very quickly. That’s where you come in. Trust me, we need you desperately,” Wagner told an audience of mostly legacy Sun VARs at the Avnet Technology Solutions 2010 Summit held in July. "Our company thrives in the top accounts, but there are things you do for customers every day that are neither simple nor standardized. Whether it’s supply chain logistics, or favorable government contract terms and provisions, we want to leverage various kinds of vehicles that don’t fit our model.”

Wagner said VARs can expect an incentive program to be introduced sometime this year.

In a secondary article by CRN targeted at the Australian Channel, Brett Winterford identified an Oct. 16 deadline given to legacy Sun partners to join OPN before Oracle switches over the servers running Sun's Partner Advantage program. The servers that supported Sun partners, including log-in areas that hold sales and marketing collateral, and redirected traffic to the OPN are planned on being switched off at that time.

Winterford's article cites Oracle vice-president of alliances and strategy for the Asia Pacific Mark Shapcott as reporting 70 percent of the combined Oracle/Sun channel had switched to the OPN program. However, these are "predominantly existing Oracle partners."

Shapcott reiterated the opportunities available to Sun partners by noting there are 350,000 Oracle customers in the world to 35,000 Sun customers.

"The market opportunity to talk about the platform stack to Oracle customers is huge," he said. "There are specific solutions a Sun partner can get into right now. It's a tactical, real opportunity to talk the complete stack message. There are database customers that are not running Sun who are suffering performance issues," Shapcott told CRN as an example. "There are opportunities for those specialized on SPARC to talk about enterprise CRM, there is database consolidation on ZFS storage. There is the Exadata opportunity."

This Spring, Oracle launched new training resources and specializations for core Sun and Oracle technologies on OPN. Oracle’s OPN Specialized partner program is designed for VARs to become trained and specialized in fifteen new areas, including Oracle Solaris, SPARC, Chip Multithreading (CMT), Sun Storage 7000, and Sun StorageTek Tape Libraries.

In considering this path for VARs, the VAR Guy posted three FastChat videos, each with a channel executive explaining how these specializations work and why it's beneficial for partners.

The first video features Wagner talking about why Sun partners may want to start specializing in Oracle’s software. The second frontlines Jim Standard, Oracle’s group VP for global alliances and channels, who discusses how Sun partners may want to go about choosing what Oracle solutions to specialize in. The final video hosts Avnet VP Mike Hurst, who offers some insights on the Avnet-Oracle relationship, and the potential upside for Oracle and Sun partners.

More Information

Oracle Encourages Its VARs to Work Their Way Up the Stack

Sun Technology-related Knowledge Zones Launched

Marketing Basics for Partners

New OPN Specializations and Training Resources for Sun and Oracle Technologies

How to Get Recognized in the Oracle Partner Network [...read more...]

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