Oracle joins Sun to secure Net business

Sun and Oracle have joined forces to focus on the Internet's potential business benefits for large UK corporates, and will start a partner programme to back the initiative.

Their Internet Centric Excellence (ICE) programme will draw on both companies' experience of providing networked business solutions.

A total of about u1.5 million has been invested in ICE, which Sun and Oracle hope will take 40 per cent of the evolving corporate Internet market within its first year.

To roll out ICE into the market, Sun and Oracle will develop a new partner network, choosing suitable candidates from their pools of existing channel partners.

Those partners selected to participate in ICE will be the ones that Sun and Oracle deem able to add value to the programme; partners that are unable to maintain healthy sales will be dropped.

Nick Barley, UK marketing director at Oracle, said: 'Both Oracle and Sun have well established reputations as leading suppliers of technology solutions for the Internet and there are obvious synergies between the two companies working together.'

At a time when more and more companies claim to be able to provide businesses with commercial gains from using the Internet, Sun and Oracle are hoping that ICE will have an air of exclusivity.

Martyn Lambert, director of Sun's network business unit, told PC Dealer: 'We will be going for the top 250 or so UK companies - the blue chip ones that will be able to relate to our joint pedigree.'