Let’s talk about opportunity. I mentioned in my previous blog that I continue to be impressed with Oracle’s commitment to partners and excited by the new business opportunities the acquisition can provide to Sun’s VAR community. That’s still the case. Here’s why.

By now, the VAR community has heard about Oracle’s optimized solutions – fully tuned software and hardware stacks that deliver superior capacity and performance. WebLogic is a good example, so are our solutions around business intelligence, database (naturally), and Siebel.  These solutions provide another venue for differentiation – especially when competing head-to-head with other providers.

Along with the product part of the solution, you also need to consider using your services offerings to enhance the solutions you provide to customers. The combined Oracle/Sun stack presents great revenue opportunities for consulting services required to implement applications to disk solutions.

Leverage the Oracle Brand

Having a compelling offer or solution is only part of the story. Taking a solution to market, whether to our  installed base or a new market segment, typically requires a solid marketing war chest to raise awareness and create demand.  Not an easy task.

The good news is, the solutions that we focus on have built-in awareness and demand. Let me repeat that. Built-in awareness and demand. Think about it — for CRM, what customer doesn’t know about Siebel?  How about WebLogic? What do analysts think?  We’ve made the investment. We’ve given you aircover. The opportunity is yours for the taking.

Get Started

So how do VARs leverage this great opportunity? Follow the advice from Oracle Group VP John Gray and Oracle partner Cloud Creek Systems: If you have not yet joined the Oracle Partner Network(OPN) program, you need to do that. You should also check out the Knowledge Zones – you can do that without joining the program.

We’ve greatly expanded the Server and Storage Systems Knowledge Zones and they are full of all the information you need to sell those products. Next, consider Specialization. Specialization provides a system of reference for our customers to find partners who have unique skill sets and competencies to provide solutions to critical business problems.

The OPN Forum during Oracle OpenWorld on Sunday, September 19, is a great way to engage and learn more. It’s been awhile since partners have been offered the opportunity to attend a large-scale conference with dedicated sessions, keynotes and demos on the Sun Servers and storage products (Solaris, too), so take advantage of it by attending Oracle OpenWorld.  It will be a great opportunity to get the latest from the experts on product roadmaps and the OPN program.

See you at Oracle OpenWorld. And in the meantime you can check out these additional Oracle resources:

Jesse Chavez is group vice president, Hardware VAD Channel Sales, Oracle. Monthly guest blogs such as this one are part of The VAR Guy’s annual sponsorship.

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