Oracle Tells Partners How They Can Benefit From 'All In' Cloud Strategy In FY 2016

A day after launching two dozen cloud services, Oracle on Tuesday told its partners that it was implementing upgrades to its channel program to help them differentiate themselves with the new products.

In a slickly produced video marking the kickoff of the 2016 fiscal year's Oracle PartnerNetwork program, a succession of Oracle execs repeated that the software giant was now primarily focused on cloud services, and partners were crucial to their delivery.

Thomas Kurian, president of product development, got the webcast started, stating: "For this coming year, our primary focus at Oracle is accelerating the enormous momentum we have with our cloud offerings in our customer base."

[Related: Here's Why Some Partners Think Oracle Cloud Sales Numbers Are Misleading]

On Monday, Kurian joined Chairman and Chief Technology Officer Larry Ellison on stage at the company's Redwood City, Calif., campus in revealing the 24 new products, including Platform-as-a-Service features and an Infrastructure-as-a-Service offering aiming to take on Amazon Web Services.

Oracle, late to the cloud game, brings two major strengths into the market: its massive built-in customer base, especially among large enterprises, and its ability to play across the stack. Oracle is the only vendor to offer a complete portfolio of SaaS, PaaS and IaaS services, Kurian said.

The company now offers several suites of cloud-based software for specific industries and tasks, as well as a robust platform for application development featuring Oracle's database, middleware and analytic tools. The new IaaS product line includes, in addition to compute and networking resources, archival storage that Ellison claimed is the most affordable in the market.

Oracle is further rounding out its product line, soon to roll out supply chain and manufacturing SaaS products, Kurian said.

"You, our partners, can both complement our offerings with value-added solutions and also help implement these solutions," Kurian said in the webcast.

Troy Richardson, senior vice president of global strategic alliances, said in the video, "Oracle is all in on the cloud."

The company has made a number of investments and acquisitions to solidify its place in the market, according to Richardson.

"We are going to be the number one cloud company in FY 2016," Richardson told partners, adding that those partners will play a critical role in making that happen.

Oracle's obligation to them is "to be a trusted and proven partner that provides technology with proven solutions."

Oracle has already introduced new benefits for Diamond level partners and "we will reward partners with support who place bets on Oracle," Richardson said. "Together we need to build transformational solutions around a complete, integrated cloud."

Joel Borellis, group vice president of partner enablement, elaborated on the new program elements that will benefit a network that grew to almost 1,500 solution providers in fiscal year 2015.

In 2016, Oracle will up the number of "guided learning paths" and release new specializations for cloud solutions "to give you an opportunity to differentiate yourself in the market." That includes new certifications around cloud services and the presentation of several cloud summits and boot camps for partners.

Bruce Chumley, group vice president of global channel sales, told the company's channel that there are three focus areas in 2016.

"First and foremost, it's about the cloud, about the Oracle cloud," he said, including robust programs around software, database, Java, PaaS and IaaS.

"It's not about transformation anymore. It's really about cloud first," he said.

But for customers not ready to make the transition, partners can still provide a great value proposition selling on-premise solutions, Chumley said.

The final goal is to broaden the market and grow revenues, he said, "so we're going to look for those partners that can really provide that growth for us."

Chumley announced that effective immediately, Oracle's cloud reseller program was making an additional 7 percent in rebates available to qualifying partners selling cloud services.

"As always, it's very crucial for our channel to extend our reach," said Chumley, "and take us into markets where we don't have selling capacity."

The cloud allows Oracle to target such markets, including smaller enterprises and SMBs, he said.

It's really important for partners to sell the entire stack, he added, which has the advantage of being "Oracle on Oracle" -- the applications are built on Oracle's platform, and hosted in Oracle's infrastructure.

Titina Ott, vice president for partner systems, shared some enhancements coming to the Oracle Partner Store that will further assist partners with managing their membership and registering deals.

"We are investing heavily in our mobile experience, ensuring an easy-to-use interface regardless of your device," Ott said. "We aim to have the complete cloud resell portfolio available for online ordering to make sure your transactions can be processed quickly."

Penny Philpot, group vice president for Oracle PartnerNetwork, which encompasses more than 26,000 partners in all, also announced the launch of a new feature called Cloud Business Builder intended to help partners build and monetize cloud services.

"We'll be rolling out new initiatives to help committed cloud partners achieve new distinctions," Philpot said, promising to share more at the upcoming OpenWorld conference.

The launch of Oracle's new cloud services comes at a perfect time, Terri Strauss, managing director of the Oracle practice at Accenture, told CRN, "as digital is continually disrupting every area of business and the platform is essential for organizations looking to drive transformation."

The global solution provider and consultant has teamed with Oracle to drive cloud adoption among joint clients by offering industry-specific solutions built with Oracle cloud services, Strauss said.

"By leveraging the end-to-end capabilities in the Oracle stack such as Mobile Cloud Service, Integration Cloud Service and the Internet of Things Cloud Service, we are helping our clients realize the value of these new technologies," Strauss told CRN via email.

PUBLISHED JUNE 23, 2015