Oracle Adds Specializations, Training To PartnerNetwork

Oracle Corp. said it is adding new specializations and training specific to Sun Microsystems Inc. products, the latest in a series of moves to incorporate that vendor’s channel partners into Oracle’s PartnerNetwork (OPN) umbrella.

New tools include an expansion of Sun material available under Oracle’s Knowledge Zone, a resource for partner peer-to-peer communication, social networking, collaboration, and training and certification paths for the vendor’s database products, middleware, applications, server and storage systems and targeted industries.

Supplemental material includes new training modules and information on how to migrate from Sun to OPN specialized.

Oracle also added six specializations specific to Sun server and storage products and nine related to Oracle applications, database and middleware.

Officials said that to date more than 23,000 channel partners have passed specialization tests.

“The number of certified specializations we have already seen since the program rolled out just six months ago is a testament to real and tangible benefits partners see in this program,” said Judson Althoff, Oracle senior vice president, worldwide alliances and channels.

New OPN specializations include Sun Sparc enterprise entry-level and midrange servers, Sun Sparc enterprise high-end servers, Sun chip multithreading (CMT) servers, Sun storage 7000 unified storage systems, Storage Tek tape libraries and Oracle Solaris.

New Oracle applications specializations include policy automation and CRM on demand. Additional database specializations are for security and warehousing. Middleware specializations include Essbase, business intelligence foundation, application grid, content management and web center.

Nick Kritikos, Oracle senior director, partner solution sales, said that the new specializations cover a full range.

“Since launching in December, we now have specializations that actually are across every pillar, whether it’s database, middleware or applications,” Kritikos said in an online blog.

“Sun has a lot of great content already there so it’s making it very easy for us to package up specializations and roll them out.”

More specializations on the way

Kritikos said that Oracle will roll out more specializations in the near term, specifically, identity management, administration analytics, and additional ones in the next year, including access management, directory services, as well as Sun-specific specializations for mainframe archiving and flash storage.

He also offered some clarification for channel partners confused about specialization and resale authorization for Sun and Oracle products.

“There seems to be a little bit of confusion around the OPN specialized program, specialization and resell,” Kritikos said.

“Oftentimes, the criteria for resell and specialization are very aligned. That’s coincidental, don’t confuse resale with specialization, you don’t need to be resale authorized in order to be specialized. Likewise you don’t need to be specialized in order to resell, except in a few specific cases like Exadata or things like that.”