Oracle sets sights on Microsoft
Vendor to step up channel training and discounts for SME database product
Oracle has pitted itself against Microsoft in the SME database market and is ramping up the training and rewards it offers its channel.
At its recent partner conference in Stockholm, Oracle announced it is offering 35 per cent discounts on training for resellers.
It is also pricing Standard Edition One, its SME database product, at €125 per seat for 10 to 30 seats, in an effort to compete head-on with Microsoft's SQL line.
"In the past two years we have gone from 4,000 partners in the European Union to 8,040 firms selling our products today," said Michel Clement, EMEA senior director at Oracle PartnerNetwork.
"We are continuing to grow our partner base. For example, we have 42,000 registered users for the partner portal."
Resellers contribute 46 per cent of Oracle's EMEA turnover. The remainder goes through large integrators or direct.
But the vendor insists it is making headway with its channel. It has opened a contact centre to deal with questions from resellers, and has stepped up its call centre efforts in Europe to generate SME customer leads.
Resellers also will be able to earn a commission for referring deals to Oracle. So far more than 1,000 deals have been referred, and the vendor has paid out on just under half of the claims.
Ian Langley, Oracle sales manager at VAR Compelsolve, said: "The model that has worked best for us this year - and this is possibly a sign of Oracle's growing maturity - is a form of quid pro quo: we bring them business, and they reward us.
"We have not seen much referral-type business. My feeling is that this is aimed a lot more at ISVs.
"One thing that Oracle has done this year is to do a lot more research into particular markets - for example, the media sector - to find out what each market's needs and pain points are."
Oracle is also continuing to work on simplifying products for the low end of the market.
"If you look back as recently as 18 months ago, partners would have had to take a standard product and make a custom installation from scratch," said Tony Mulligan, senior director of channel sales EMEA at Oracle.
"We've done thousands of installs, so we did a lot of work to get some of the more common configurations and make them standard installation configurations."