Oracle aims to move partners up value chain

NEW DELHI: With more than 500 partners in India and over 80 percent of its business coming through the channel, Oracle is getting aggressive about its strategies for this community.

The vendor works with a set of partners. “We have system integrators (SIs), value added distributors (VADs), independent software vendors (ISVs) and resellers. Our channel strategy is reviewed from time to time based on the market requirement. In the past three to four months we have started a few initiatives that keep in mind the mid-market which is an important part of our strategy and we are working together with our channel to tap this market,” said Kaushik Mitra, Director—Applications Channel, Oracle India.

The company has been strengthening its partner network through trainings, events and recently opened an Oracle solution center in Gurgaon. “We are also focused on training and enabling partners on various mechanisms. Some training modules are offered as part of the plan. We are looking at how to make it easy to avail these programs,” mentioned Mitra. The reason for the increased focus is the fact that Oracle will be addressing the market requirements through VADs.

The objective of all these activities is to move the channel up the value chain. Mitra shared that encouraging partners was an extremely important plan for Oracle. The vendor has a team that reviews the partners capabilities and evaluates them from time to time.

On the applications side Oracle is engaged with leading SIs. “We are showing increased focus on India market and undertaking a number of go-to-market strategies with them. The focus is on best-of-breed products like CRM on demand, business intelligence etc and we have recruited partners in that segment,” elaborated Mitra.

Explaining the role of each partner segment Mitra shared that ISVs play a role when developing products. The SIs implement solutions and offer the technologies to market. The resellers focus on reselling the products.

Talking about the opportunities in India, Mitra said, “There is a lot of focus on domestic business in India. The opportunities around various verticals such as telecom, government, power sector, which is a huge market that has opened up, are expanding. We’re very strong in the telecom sector.”

Another initiative Oracle started sometime back for the channel was the Remarketer Program. Mitra stated that they appreciate the fact that resellers need their support. Hence the program enables resellers to sell products without having to make an upfront financial investment.