Oracle lowered the threshold for entering the partnership program for companies focusing on small and middle-sized customers. The partnership fee for entering QuickStartPlus program, which provides joint marketing and sales support from the corporation and its distributors, has been set at just US$300 with the alternative of a free transfer to the standard program as soon as the partner's business with Oracle increases to a certain level. However, the period of membership in the simplified program has been restricted to 2 years.

'Ten new SMB-oriented partners join the network each month' Pavel Zakharov, Oracle CIS partnership manager, said. According to Oracle, around 200 developers from its partnership network offer approximately 300 custom products for small and middle-sized companies. Yet, against the common idea of the middle market craving for off-the-shelf solutions, 80 percent of customers purchase databases to run applications developed in-house, Zakharov noted.

The SMB center is planning to boost license sales by 40 percent and double the number of customers, with 70 percent first-time clients, in 2007 fiscal year.

'We're very interested in the segment of 1C customers. They are already using some databases for their business software. And we'd be happy to consider transferring their 1C systems to Oracle database', Kuvanova said. She has neither officially confirmed the fact of negotiations with 1C nor has she denied the possible talks with this vendor in the future.