News Facts
-- The Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) Forum activities kicked off a week of partner programming and networking opportunities at Oracle OpenWorld 2011 for Oracle partners. -- A record 4,500 partners from around the globe attended Sunday's OPN Forum -- more than doubling last year's attendance. Partners assembled to hear more about how they can leverage new and existing OPN resources and programs to learn, grow and profit with Oracle. -- Judson Althoff, Oracle's Senior Vice President of Worldwide Alliances & Channels and Embedded Sales, jumpstarted OPN Forum by thanking partners for their continued excellence and encouraged the audience to leverage Oracle innovation, Specialization and engineering to extend their services and business opportunities. -- Althoff also applauded the continued global adoption of the OPN Specialized program, noting Oracle's 3,000 Specialized partners and 30,000 total cumulative certified implementation specialists, to date. -- During the session Althoff and other OPN leaders announced new additions to OPN's Enablement offerings, including the availability of Oracle Exastack Optimized and new Oracle Exastack Remote Labs; as well as preview of upcoming enhancements to the OPN Solutions Catalog. -- Partners including Arrow, Avnet, cVidya, Enkitec, GoldenSource and Pythian and Triple Point, joined Althoff on stage to share their successes with Oracle's engineered systems, including Oracle Exadata Database Machine, and excitement over the opportunity presented to the channel by Oracle's recently announced Oracle Database Appliance. -- Oracle President and CFO Safra Catz and Oracle President Mark Hurd thanked partners for their continued commitment to Oracle and reiterated the value Oracle's partner ecosystem brings to the company. -- Afternoon breakout sessions provided specific content addressing priorities for the Asia Pacific (APAC), Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), Latin America (LAD), and North America (NAS) regions.