Oracle believes there is a $250 million opportunity for its partners in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region.
This was announced yesterday by Stefan Diedericks, alliances and channels director at Oracle SA, speaking during the Oracle Partner Day in Johannesburg.
With 295 partners, including system integrators and value-added distributors among others, the company believes cloud computing presents many opportunities for partners in the region.
Oracle is making an aggressive move into the cloud as opposed to its historical database business. Its founder and CTO Larry Ellison recently said his company is expanding its cloud computing offerings, bringing Oracle into more direct competition with the likes of Amazon.com.
To amplify Oracle's reach in the broad marketplace, Oracle Partner Network recently added Oracle Cloud services to its value-added distributor distribution offerings. The two-tier distribution model for the Oracle Cloud enables partners to leverage local value-added distributors in their respective markets to take advantage of Oracle Cloud reselling and implementation services.
According to Diedericks, last year the company posted a 22% growth in its resale business in the region. During a similar event last year, Oracle had set a target of 20% growth.
He pointed out that Oracle, which historically went to market directly, was undergoing huge changes with the channel partners playing a much bigger role. "Now the partners are contributing more than 70% of the sales up from 50% the previous year," he said.
Diedericks believes digital technologies are playing a crucial role in the transformation of the company's partners in SADC. In the previous year, he said, Oracle realised a 28% increase in what it terms "active partners" and a 43% increase in partner transformation.
He also noted 92% of Oracle's platform-as-a-service business in the region is being driven by partners.
However, Diedericks said the company did not see sufficient uptake from partners with its Oracle Database 12c solution.
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