Oracle pilot prepares for European take-off

Database vendor seeks channel customers to help adapt Fast Forward bundle for European market.

Oracle is looking for European pilot customers to test its Fastard bundle for European market. Forward applications and services bundle, which is intended to help medium-sized organisations speed up their implementation times.

The scheme, which is similar to rival SAP's Accelerated SAP programme and methodology, has been piloted in the US for the past six months. Oracle set up a committee to evaluate how to adapt the scheme for the European market in September and hopes to make it available within the next three months.

Jim Stone, Oracle's manager of applications and services marketing, said: 'Fast Forward in the US was intended to provide rapid implementation times for companies dealing with a single site, single language and single currency. Obviously, we have to adapt it for the European market and rewrite the methodology's templates to manage different currencies and languages. Here, it will be aimed at simple, small sites with up to 75 users or companies that want to replicate identical sites across Europe.'

He added that Oracle was looking for pilot customers in the UK and The Netherlands to test out the revamped methodology, but aimed to bundle it up as a fixed price package with set fees for licences, consulting and implementation. A typical project in the US costs $350,000.

Fast Forward will be sold mainly via the channel into the Windows NT space, but will be available on other platforms. The first applications to be made available under the scheme will be Oracle financials, with manufacturing a possible second candidate.

As reported in PC Dealer, 22 October, Oracle is meeting with Azlan to decide if the distributor will continue to sell Oracle's NT product.

Richard Pryor-Jones, sales director at Azlan, said he is due to meet Allen Swann, UK alliances director at Oracle, to discuss the two companies' future relationship.