In an effort to help its partners drive cloud adoption across Africa, Oracle has introduced a Cloud Excellence Implementer (CEI) programme.
The programme aims to help businesses make a smooth transition to the cloud through Oracle implementation partners, said Stefan Diedericks, alliances and channel director for Oracle Africa. According to Oracle, the Cloud Excellence Implementer (CEI) programme is only available to partners with the skills and infrastructure to build, deploy, run and manage both Oracle and non-Oracle workloads.
"Our aim is to drive African intellectual property creation on top of the Oracle cloud platform."
"As Oracle's cloud business continues to grow, Oracle partner network is expanding its ecosystem of highly qualified implementing firms to help drive customer success and experience with Oracle Cloud."
As a late entrant into the cloud market, Oracle has been doubling down on efforts to bolster its cloud-based services. Oracle's total cloud business revenue rose to $1.47 billion in the three months ended 31 August. In July, the company added 1 000 new jobs in Europe, Middle East and Africa, so as to grow its cloud computing business.
Also, the company plans to open cloud centres of excellence in Nigeria and Kenya - for now there are only available in Johannesburg, said Diedericks. Cloud centres of excellence are physical environment where partners engage with Oracle cloud specialists and participate in workshop where they get help in developing innovative solutions, he added
"Oracle is on a radical journey in driving global cloud adoption, inspiring partners to invest in economic and skills development by positioning and prioritising the creation of solutions built on the Oracle Cloud Platform.
"This gives businesses new innovative ways to engage with their citizens, customers, suppliers and consumers via artificial intelligence, cognitive learning, machine learning and blockchain technologies."
According to Jon Tullet, research manager IT services for IDC, cloud adoption in Africa is expected to evolve rapidly, just as it is worldwide, not just in sharp revenue growth, but in methodology, distributed services like IOT and multicloud hybrids and channel mediation.
"The role of the channel must be emphasised in this; IDC forecasts that by 2020, more than 70% of global cloud services providers' revenues will be mediated by the channel. "
As a result, there is tremendous pressure on local channels to align themselves and their portfolios with their vendor partners as they come to emphasize cloud as a primary go to market strategy, says Tullet. These changes within the channel and partner ecosystems in SA have been underway for a number of years, but at a slow pace, he adds.
"This will have to accelerate very quickly in the near term; we expect to see the channel move quickly to extend services around "complementary or value-add solutions for top-tier provider partners, workload migration and optimisation, hybrid infrastructure services, multicloud brokerage, and more.
"There will inevitably be a degree of business risk and some consolidation among providers; the partner support systems provided by the major vendors will be critical in supporting this evolution, including changes in incentivisation, support, training, and integration."
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