On behalf of Oracle's Public Sector team in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, I would like to welcome you to this special section of the bimonthly ISV newsletter dedicated to our work with ISVs in this strategic market.

Every two months we will bring you news of what Oracle and its ISV partners are doing in the public sector, how we are helping government and public organisations to improve their daily operations, and how you can get involved with - and benefit from - our go-to-market initiatives for this sector.

The public sector is undeniably Oracle's largest market in EMEA. At least two thirds of all governmental data in the region is stored in an Oracle database, renowned for its scalability, high security and ability to process very large volumes of data.

In recent years we have seen demand surge for Oracle's E-Business Suite of applications in the public sector, as cost-conscious organisations seek to replace legacy systems with suites of modern front and back-office applications to streamline operations, share data, reduce costs and underpin the transition to e-government.

Oracle has never been in the business of making specialised vertical solutions for the public sector, however, and this is where our ISV partners play a key role. Across EMEA, we are actively looking to partner with local and multinational software vendors with outstanding solutions for every area of government and public services.

These ISVs can leverage Oracle's massive existing applications and technology footprint in the sector to deliver solutions built on Oracle database and application server technology. Many also choose to integrate their own solutions with the Oracle E-Business Suite to provide a modern, end-to-end solution for e-government.

Oracle provides a ready-made, world-leading technology foundation allowing ISVs to concentrate all their research and development on the application layer itself, where the most customer value add is to be found. In addition to Oracle Database and Oracle Application Server, ISVs can also now take advantage of Oracle's Citizen Data Hub, an off-the-shelf, flexible data schema that allows the easy sharing of citizen data between applications from different vendors. Public sector organisations using Oracle Citizen Data Hub can use it to easily view current and past relationships between citizens and organisations, and to view historical citizen data from any point in time.

In its fiscal year 2006, beginning June 2005, Oracle is offering more attractive partnership opportunities than ever before to public sector ISVs. Your participation is critical to our success, and in turn we can offer significant revenue potential, assistance with marketing and sales campaigns, and outstanding technical support in helping you to migrate your solutions to an Oracle technology platform. Oracle's local public sector sales teams in each EMEA country are empowered to recruit and develop joint business plans with local ISVs who present a strong, complementary solution.

Additionally, for ISVs that are keen to expand into new markets, Oracle can offer significant support and assistance in finding local reseller and implementation partners in new country markets.

ISVs will play a more critical role than ever in Oracle's go to market strategy for the public sector in EMEA in fiscal 2006. To find out more about the benefits of working with the world's leading relational database vendor, contact your local Oracle PartnerNetwork Interaction Center.

I look forward to working with you.

Jens Mortensen
Vice President, Public Services, Oracle Europe, Middle East and Africa