Channel key to Oracle`s market gains

Oracle South Africa has appointed Deon Els, formerly head of business practices at Oracle, as its new channel manager.

Els says that while the strategy for Oracle`s partner programme ties in with the companys broader goal of consolidation, Oracle sees ample opportunity to grow its local market share and increase its channel by focusing on indirect business.

"Partners and ISVs will be recruited on the strength of their sales edge and ability to generate and grow their business base with Oracle solutions," says Els.

"Black partners will play a critical role in growing Oracle`s markets," says Els. "Growing our black partner base is a key element of Oracles empowerment policy, and for this reason we are helping them to identify new business opportunities and to build up their skills. These partners will be offered an accelerator programme to bring them into Oracle`s global partner programme as soon as possible."

Els highlights the mid-market as representing massive growth potential.

"Through partners Oracle will look for more deliberate initiatives to drill down to this market segment. There is a market perception that Oracle solutions are expensive, to the exclusion of the mid-market. This is clearly inaccurate when organisations take overall cost and ROI into account. Oracle, with its partners, can deliver cost-effective solutions in this market space through offerings such as Oracle E-business Suite, which can be implemented quickly, delivering an equally fast ROI," says Els.

"In terms of the ISV space, Oracle, globally, has an initiative that aims to migrate ISVs off competitive products. We have already had great success in the local market space," says Els. "We aim to grow our market by developing products on Oracle through our ISV network."

"We`ll also strengthen our regional presence by finding the right partners in identified areas. Our strategy can be summed up quite simply: partners need to see the value of selling Oracle and, from a customer perspective, it`s really about what makes the most sense in terms of our value proposition," Els concludes.