Oracle unveils expanded SMB solutions with 'Oracle Accelerate'

Oracle president Charles Phillips unveiled Oracle Accelerate, an expanded small and medium business (SMB) program last Monday at Oracle OpenWorld.

Leveraging Oracle's existing success in the SMB market, with more than 19,000 SMB applications customers worldwide, Oracle Accelerate is comprised of industry-specific, prepacked application bundles, rapid implementation tools and a growing network of certified Oracle applications resellers.

"Oracle has long been a trusted partner for small and medium businesses, and we have developed a wealth of knowledge to help facilitate the unique needs of that market," Mr Phillips said.

"The introduction of Oracle Accelerate expands on our experience in this market, and makes it faster and easier for customers and partners to leverage Oracle's leading enterprise applications."

Comprehensive product, industry bundles

Key to Oracle Accelerate is the availability of pre-packed application bundles that can be rapidly implemented and provide a wide range of industry-specific functionality. Working with the partner community, Oracle has identified 80 product and industry-specific bundles that can help companies quickly take advantage of Oracle's enterprise applications, without sacrificing flexibility and functionality.

The product bundles deliver comprehensive business flows, across front office, back office and industry-specific processes. The bundles can be extended by partners to meet specific industry requirements.

Oracle's rapid implementation tools - Oracle Business Accelerators - are a key component of the Oracle Accelerate program. Oracle Business Accelerators feature an automated setup tool that configures end-to-end business flows to decrease cost, risk and implementation time.

The setup tool captures responses to simple questions about specific business requirements and then automatically applies that information to the application implementation. Once a customer has completed the set-up questionnaire, a new instance can be up and running in hours.

Established partner network

To facilitate partner involvement in Oracle Accelerate, Oracle has expanded the SMB content available on the Oracle PartnerNetwork portal. This new SMB-specific content provides partners with valuable resources used by Oracle's own direct sales team, ensuring that partners are equipped with the up-to-date tools to sell Oracle software and effectively compete in the SMB space.

Links to customer presentations, product positioning documentation, sales kits and specialised training are designed to help partners understand the unique messaging, positioning, products and strategies for selling Oracle products into this market.

Finally, Oracle is establishing regional SMB Solution Centres throughout the world to showcase the Oracle Accelerate offerings and bring partners into the sales cycle.

SMB Applications Business Unit

Oracle has developed a global business unit that will manage and monitor the product and partner components of the program. Headed by senior vice-president Tony Kender, the SMB business unit will maintain a world class partner/reseller ecosystem, drive the continued development of product and industry bundles, and work to ensure SMB customer success.

For more information, visit oracle.com/accelerate or contact Oracle Malta on 2131 7487/kevin.attard@oracle.com