Nine of the ten SMB center employees have already started working. A sales manager has been assigned to each focus sector, i.e. telecommunications, public sector, financial institutions, retail, transportation and manufacturing. These sectors are currently making almost equal contributions to the center's revenue.

The call center has moved from Prague, Czech Republic to Moscow this year and employs two people now. They are involved in product promotions and providing the customers with information on technologies, the costs and licensing conditions.

As Scherbakov said the whole telesales cycle is not suitable for Russia as Russian customers mostly prefer a face-to-face contact. Nevertheless, last year, around 150 leads generated by the call center passed to over 70 Oracle partners.

The outcome of the first, most difficult year wasn't bad, Oracle representatives said. The number of customers rose by 418 to 650. The sales to SMB increased 75 percent, making up approximately 15 percent of Oracle's annual revenue from technology products in the CIS.

In the meantime, the company's partnership network structure started to change. While the total number of partners has increased by 55 percent compared with the previous year, the number of partners operating mainly in the SMB segment has grown 2.5 times. About a half of the new partners are entirely SBM-oriented.