Oracle Ups Partner Education Strategy

Oracle (ORCL) has announced a new partner enablement strategy to provide expanded training and education choices through new Boot Camp formats, enhancements to the OPN Competency Center, new Partner Solution Kits and an updated Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) portal.

The new education strategy utilizes new Web 2.0 constructs to enable more interaction and collaboration between Oracle and its partners as well as between partners. The partner training strategy is comprised of three levels:

Boot Camps are training programs developed exclusively for partners that deliver focused training by specific product area and are free of charge to delivery partners. The courses are focused on products recently acquired by Oracle and are currently available for Siebel 8.1 Loyalty & Marketing, Siebel 8.1 Self Service, WebLogic Server/SOA, Enterprise Content Management/UCM, OBI/EE, Agile PLM, Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 Best Practices and Enterprise Performance Management.

Oracle also has made enhancements to the OPN Competency Center, which provides a dashboard for evaluating a partner’s skills and competencies. A new feature allows partners to rate training content, which allows feedback from partners to improve content and share with others what they find useful. Plans are underway to further enhance this portal to incorporate more Web 2.0 capabilities that will increase partner networking opportunities.

Oracle also is delivering market-ready Partner Solution Kits to provide a resource of channel-ready marketing materials for Oracle 1-CLICK Ordering products that incorporate messaging and value propositions for end-user clients. Resources in these kits include printer-ready reference materials and online training and demonstrations. A complete set of 1-CLICK Ordering Solution Kits is currently available. Additional Solution Kits for Oracle Applications products are planned for later this year.

The OPN Portal also has a new home page with new benefits, navigation, information centers, 2.0 feedback and social community elements. These capabilities and enhancements are in direct response to partner feedback, said the company. New features of the portal include horizontal navigation, a “Most Popular Resources” page, Knowledge Zones and RSS Feeds.

“This is the first time we are taking training to the masses and providing flexible delivery options for our partners,” said Judson Althoff, group vice president, Worldwide Alliances & Channels. “Additionally, we recognize that our partners have tremendous expertise and are an excellent resource to contribute to our boot camp curriculum. Effectively, we are open-sourcing the content – so that it will continually be evolved and refreshed with the most current and relevant materials related to our expanding product line.”