Oracle strives for partner co-innovation and specialist drive

Oracle’s efforts to bring in new partners has seen a rise in businesses with various specialties entering its network as it continues to build out its market reach.

Speaking at Oracle CloudWorld Tour’s Sydney conference on 18 March, the vendor’s Australia and New Zealand (A/NZ) regional managing director, Stephen Bovis, said as it looks into newer technologies, it’s finding specialist partners with capacity in these areas.

“As part of our overall partner program, we’re continuing to develop and expand the amount of partners that we’re working with,” he said.

“Many of these smaller partners have some very specialist capabilities and by working closely with them, in particular with some customer challenges, we’re finding that’s also working for us as well.”

The theme of specialty partners was echoed by both Oracle’s group vice president and head of alliances and channels for Asia Pacific (APAC) Lalit Malik and A/NZ general manager of alliances and channels Robert Gosling.

“They offer a unique benefit to Oracle because they have very deep and quite technical expertise in areas like low code, AI or data,” Gosling said to ARN.

“A lot of those partners are very agile and cost effective in this market and they really adopt our technology strongly.

“They can add a lot of value to our sales organisation when there is a single opportunity within a customer, as opposed to where the top end of those GSIs [global systems integrators] are working on the transformational changes in the business; there is a real need in the market for those specialist partners.”

Malik added that while Oracle has existing partners that are dominant in the software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) spaces, there is still room to add other specialist players in areas such as Oracle Cloud Human Capital Management (HCM), data analytics, VMware, generative AI and enterprise resource planning (ERP).

Oracle’s desire for more specialist partners comes as it largely maintains its partner first strategy across the APAC region, which it has held for the last five years according to Malik, who also shared that 80 per cent of its software-as-a-service implementations are being performed by partners.

“We have a partner-first strategy in the region and we’re working hand in hand with partners. So, we’re invested,” Malik said.

“The sales and partner organisations are very close.”

Malik added that one relatively recent change Oracle has made in its approach to partners is to engage with them earlier in the project.

“Quite a few of our partners are advisory, so they are helping customers build a technology transformation roadmap for multiple years,” he said.

“We’re working with those advisory partners … not at the point of solution, but we’re engaging much earlier with the sales organisation.”

New partner program coming to A/NZ soon

The vendor is also shaking up its partner approach in the region with the phased rollout of its three-tiered enhanced Oracle Partner Network (OPN) program. The highest tier, referred to as Level 3, is available globally including in A/NZ. However, when available in its entirety, Malik said partners can enter the program at any level.

Among the benefits on offer are partner credits, which are earned after sales and can be used to unlock further perks, according to Oracle’s website, including advanced delivery and success training and marketing resources and activities.

Also available via the credit system are technical accelerators in the form of dev/test environments, integration validation and solution architect and migration services and success support with partner success managers and technical account managers.

“If you want to run a POC, there’s a benefit that’s available to all partners in Level 1, 2 and 3,” Malik said.

“There are other benefits, like a subscription to Oracle University for learning and go to market benefits as well, getting your solutions on Oracle.com and multiple other go to market activities that we can do jointly.”

Co-innovation is key

Regardless if it’s with a brand new organisation with a niche specialisation or a business with a longstanding partnership with the vendor, Oracle wants to innovate alongside its channel network.

“If you’re an ISV [independent software vendor], you build a solution leveraging the Oracle portfolio, including the AI capabilities that we have,” Malik said. “If you’re a system integrator, bring the solutions together, build that for the customer and leverage the capability of Oracle. If you’re a value-added reseller, then bring all the components of, say, cyber security, networking and Oracle software and services together for your customers.

“So, you co-innovate and then create a business impact [and] differentiation for customers.”

Oracle’s new partner program is expected to funnel further into the theme of co-innovation, with Malik adding the fundamentals of the redesign is that both Oracle and partners win together, and drive customer success.

“How do we do that? Co-innovation is one expectation that whatever partner type you are, you need to co-innovate to be ahead,” Malik said.

“Co-innovation could be in the form of development in terms of integration, in terms of go to market, or taking the solution to the customer and then creating the impact.

“Creating the impact with the customer, differentiation and creating that competitive advantage for them in the market.

“The technology solution should be able to create the technology advantage for that customer and, of course, drive customer success.”

Oracle’s desire for co-innovation with partners can be seen with its work alongside Deloitte and Accenture to integrate its solutions into electricity distributor Essential Energy, with Bovis adding that it highlights the necessity for it to collaborate on major projects and create value for end customers.