Partners will be more pivotal for Oracle in cloud era, UK channel boss claims

Software giant launches channel push around public cloud following its declaration that 'Amazon's lead is over'

Partners will become more important for Oracle as it pushes more aggressively into cloud, its UK and Ireland channel boss has asserted.

Oracle founder Larry Ellison (pictured on stage, below) promised at OpenWorld last week that the next 12 months will see the vendor move full tilt into the infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) space, vowing that "Amazon's lead is over".

The application, database and infrastructure giant also used the event to unveil its Cloud Managed Service Provider Programme with a dozen global launch partners including Accenture, Atos and Dimension Data.

Although there was a "major cloud buzz" at the event, partners are now demanding to know how, exactly, they can exploit Oracle's burgeoning cloud portfolio, head of UK and Ireland alliances and channels, Simon Hill, told CRN after the event.

The cloud MSP programme answers that question, he claimed.

"We are looking to enable our partners to front and deliver a single cloud solution in a managed services capacity, on public cloud," he said.

"They're offering a single, complete solution to the customer, but have got a seamless integrated business model back to our public cloud around IaaS and PaaS. And as part of the programme, we will reward partners that have the capacity to do all the things they normally do from a managed services perspective: the build, the deploy, the run, the manage; the important thing to note is that this is not just about Oracle workloads but also non-Oracle workloads as well which we are looking to promote."

Despite the 12 pilot partners all being global giants, Hill stressed that Oracle is "aggressively" targeting UK-only recruits, both those from within its existing partner ecosystem and, "more importantly", those not currently working with Oracle.

Hill rejected the suggestion that partners would be reluctant to choose Oracle over more established competition, such as AWS or Azure.

"To echo what Larry said, we are aggressively moving into that infrastructure space, and really looking at that next generation of datacentre," he said. "So we are looking to recruit partners that have a pedigree in that IaaS space but, then, if they can onboard the IaaS there are further opportunities for them to go up the stack into PaaS and then onto applications and SaaS. That is the compelling proposition we are taking to those born-in-the-cloud partners, but also other non-Oracle partners."

While Oracle may not be known traditionally as the most channel-centric vendor, the channel is more than an after-thought when it comes to its public cloud strategy, Hill said.

"We are looking to our partners not only to transact the deal, but also as a part of that transaction to own the customer and have account control through the implementation, through to go-live, and then ultimately having that customer advocacy through referenceability," he said.

Partners are "absolutely more important" for Oracle in the cloud era than for on-premise, he added.

"I can cite a number of examples," he said. "Even if I take just IaaS there's a huge push in regards to volume - the mid-sized customers outside enterprise. We are really looking to our reseller community and maybe new resellers we are not dealing with already which can help us build out a volume strategy around IaaS to the mid-market."