Oracle partner experiences?

[ChrisK]

Any Oracle partners out there willing to share their experiences? We just stuck our toe into the water with a gold level partnership and are about to start down the certification/specialization path. I know we have a lot of IT folks on the board and I'm looking for PIREPs, especially regarding the cost and value of certification. It looks like even with the gold discounts the implementation certification I looked at today is going to cost us over $5000 per person. Worth it? Do potential customers value specialization? Does Oracle refer deals?

 

[poadeleted21]

Not enough info. We did it at my consulting firm. Most, make that all, our customers didn't have a damn clue what the certification meant. We did it for the discounts which never worked out with our business model. But we had a shiny plaque to hang in the entry way.

 

[gkainz]

Deals with the devil ultimately only benefit the devil.
Ex-oracle employee ...

 

[docmirror]

You will pay, and then you'll pay some more, and then you will have to pay once again, but after that you'll only have to pay everytime you mention 'Oracle' in hushed breath.

NTTAWWT, it's just business. They bought SUN for almost all cash, the major players at SUN promptly left because they could see the handwriting on the wall. SUN has been basically gutted of everything except the shell of Solaris as a port for Oracle DB. MySQL and the rest of the relational people left. Oracle is not your friend, but then again it's just business.

 

[ChrisK]

Thanks I think . I am a very small (4 person) consulting company looking to expand with somewhat referencable clients (at least as far as OPN is concerned). We have been doing a lot of ADF and BPM / SOA work so specialization seemed to be a good choice.