Letter from the Editor

As Oracle enters its final quarter of the fiscal year, there is a lot to celebrate with our community of ISV partners in the EMEA region.

First of all, I am delighted to note that our ISV community is continuing to grow at a phenomenal rate. Over the last 18 months, the equivalent of three new ISVs have joined the Oracle PartnerNetwork every day, bringing the total number of EMEA-based ISV partners to more than 4,490. This is testament to the value of partnering with Oracle, the resources that Oracle can provide to help ISVs grow and expand their business, and the sheer demand for solutions built on Oracle's market-leading technology platform.

ISV Business Grows by 42%

Membership of the Oracle PartnerNetwork is one thing, but what really matters to all of us is building solid joint business. Again, the facts speak for themselves. At the end of the last quarter, Oracle's revenue through the ISV channel had grown by 42% from the previous year, thanks to growing demand for Oracle-based ISV solutions. Revenues are growing for all three Oracle license types: Full Use, Application-Specific Full Use and Embedded Software Licence. The choice of licence types has given our ISV community real flexibility in how they choose to licence and resell Oracle, ensuring that even the smallest Oracle-based deals are profitable.

We are also seeing more and more ISVs choosing to develop and deploy their solutions using Oracle Application Server in addition to Oracle Database. Choosing Oracle for both database and the integration/deployment layer brings significant cost, time and functionality benefits, which you can read about in our feature article on Oracle Application Server 10g.

Helping ISVs sell to SMBs

Our ISV partners are also benefiting from Oracle's major focus on the SMB market. ISVs are crucial to Oracle's business in this sector - in fact, more than 90% of Oracle-based solutions sold to small and midsize businesses come from the ISV community. We are helping ISVs to capitalise on the market opportunity in several ways. Firstly, we have launched a major initiative to promote our ISV partners' solutions to SMBs - and to pass all the leads we generate directly to the relevant partner. Read more about this in our story about the Oracle SMB Network.

Secondly, the SMB-friendly product versions Oracle Database 10g Standard Edition One and Oracle Application Server 10g Standard Edition One are making the Oracle technology platform financially and technologically viable for even the smallest organisations - giving them the security, scalability, reliability and performance of Oracle at a price they can afford.

Thirdly, I would encourage potential ISV partners with a solution for small and midsize organisations to investigate Oracle's embedded software licence option, which allows the vendor to embed Oracle Database and/or Oracle Application Server and pay a percentage of their or Oracle's list price to Oracle for each deal. This makes even small Oracle-based deals financially interesting for ISVs selling to SMBs.

And finally, we have made it very easy and affordable for ISVs with midmarket solutions to join the Oracle PartnerNetwork QuickStart programme and resell Oracle Database 10g Standard Edition One, for a low joining fee of just €250.00. With a membership fee that could be recouped on your first Oracle sale, can you afford not to become an Oracle partner?

Go to Market with Oracle in FY06

Oracle's fiscal year 2006 begins on 1st June 2005, and we have already planned our go-to-market campaigns for specific products, markets and industry sectors. ISV participation will form a critical part of many of these campaigns, and I would encourage all vendors to investigate the opportunities we can offer.

As always, I hope that you will find this newsletter interesting and that you will be inspired to find out more about the benefits of becoming an Oracle partner. If you have any questions about anything contained in this newsletter, please don't hesitate to get in touch.

Bertram Mandel
Senior Director, Alliances & Channels, Oracle Europe, Middle East and Africa