You may have seen that Oracle made CRN's "20 Coolest Cloud Platform Vendors of the 2015 Cloud 100" list back in late January. What you may not have seen is that Oracle took things a step further by launching our Coolest Cloud 100 Showcase.

The showcase offers a detailed look into Oracle's innovative portfolio of cloud platform solutions. Assets to take advantage of include OPN Cloud Connection; Oracle Cloud Knowledge Zones and thorough Oracle e-books.

So go ahead and reacquaint yourselves with what Oracle has to offer. We want to help your customers explore, engage and make a difference with the Oracle Cloud.

All the best,
The OPN Comms team

Tune in on Wednesday, February 25 at 10am PT to watch a live OPN PartnerCast focused on Oracle Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Applications.

Joel Borellis, GVP of Partner Enablement at Oracle will be our host. Stream the show live from the Oracle PartnerNetwork homepage and join the conversation via Twitter by using @oraclepartners or #OPN. Topics and guests include:

• Oracle's Cloud Strategy & ERP Overview: Rod Johnson, GVP, Applications Business Group, Oracle

• Oracle Financials Cloud & Project Portfolio Management Cloud Strategy: Terrance Wampler, VP, Financials Product Strategy, Oracle

• Oracle Procurement & Supply Chain Management in the Cloud: Jon Chorley, CSO & GVP, SCM Product Strategy & PLM, Oracle

Missed the last live PartnerCast on the ISV & OEM Partner Program? Replays are now available.

We'll see you online next week!
Your OPN PartnerCast genies

There has been a lot of excitement since Larry Ellison’s January announcement of Oracle Exadata Database Machine X5-2. With that excitement comes questions and comments, so we figured it’d be an opportune time to sit down with one of our knowledgeable executives.

Below is an interview with Joel Borellis – Group Vice President of Partner Enablement at Oracle. We asked Joel a few questions surrounding the launch, and here is what he had to say.

Q. Oracle recently launched their new Oracle Exadata Database Machine X5 solution. Tell us a little bit more about that?
A. The 6th generation of Exadata, Oracle Exadata Database Machine X5-2, remains the best platform to run Oracle Database workloads. There are many new features in this latest release designed to meet the needs of customers. For example, elastic configurations deliver a system specifically optimized for any database workloads. Also, On Oracle Exadata Database Machine X5-2, the Oracle Database Machine can take advantage of optimized all-flash performance for any transactions and queries using the Extreme Flash all-flash storage option. Oracle VM support provides isolation for consolidated workloads that need hard limits on CPU/memory or independent admin/OS.

Q. How can Oracle partners benefit from Oracle Exadata Database Machine X5?  
A. Any application that uses Oracle Database Machine today can be seamlessly migrated to use the Oracle Exadata Database Machine with no changes to the application. The elastic configurations provide partners with a flexible and efficient mechanism to expand computing power and/or storage capacity of any given Oracle Exadata Database Machine system. Partners can offer their customers with a system custom configured to meet any business use case.  

Q. What OPN opportunities are available to partners around Oracle Exadata Database Machine X5 or Oracle’s Engineered Systems?
A. We encourage partners to take advantage of our enablement programs around Oracle Exadata Database Machine and the rest of our engineered systems. Partners should visit the Knowledge Zone for Oracle Exadata Database Machine to take advantage of selling tools for Oracle Exadata Database Machine, access training materials and much more!

Q. How can our partners engage with Oracle around our Engineered Systems?
A. We offer a wealth of information on all of our Engineered Systems for our partners. Start by visiting Oracle.com/partners and visit the Engineered Systems Knowledge Zone.

Thanks for reading this installment of our quarterly Partner Executive Spotlight series. Stay tuned for our Q4 post!

Cheers,
Oracle PartnerNetwork

Happy Hump Day, partners! It's definitely much colder and much snowier here in Denver than it was yesterday...

But that's a good thing since we've been getting cozy on the Oracle Broomfield campus attending all of the featured breakout sessions! Today's sessions have run the gamut with topics related to apps, hardware, sales, pre-sales, implementation and tools. Big thanks to our partners: DSI; RF-SMART; JDEtips; QI Systems; Nimble Storage/Cisco; CDI; Canon; Steltix; Panaya; Quest for facilitating some of the sessions. One takeaway we've been reminded of today is that the three essentials for modern marketing include strategy + training, engagement and technology.