Alfonso Di Ianni, Senior Vice President, Eastern Europe, CIS, Middle East, Africa, Oracle Corporation, manages growth and profitability across 86 countries. He is responsible for technology, application and consulting licenses across these countries. Joining Oracle in 1997, he has previously held the post of global leadership of Oracle Field Marketing and Alliance Channels. He holds a Masters Degree in Electronic Engineering and a Masters Degree in Business Administration.
With the current swing in global and regional business outlook how is the Oracle product portfolio performing in the market place?
Di Ianni: We have experienced 60% growth in vertical and horizontal applications year on year, in Q1 2011. In technology that is database and middleware we experienced 15% growth.
Please describe the Oracle channel programme for resellers, developers and education partners?
Di Ianni: Our structure in terms of channel programme is the same around the world – it is called the Oracle Partner Network. We also have the same partner tier that is platinum, gold, silver and we have the same terms of conditions for handling VADs around the world. But the selection of who can be a key partner and who can be platinum depends on the local business.
Does the Partner Network include only Oracle applications or is the Sun server platforms included as well?
Di Ianni: The Oracle Partner Network has been extended to hardware as well. Since Sun had its own programme, after the acquisition we merged this into a single programme with all the benefits, rule of engagement for all partners no matter what products they want to use. One thing is important we have a strong incentive for our partners to specialise. Given we have a very wide portfolio of products we want our partners to add value to each of the stacks and focus on their knowledge and investment in using the applications versus middleware versus database.
How are the various partner businesses managed under the same programme?
Di Ianni: In the Oracle Partner Network we have system integrators and reseller partners within the same programme. We have these streams and there are different terms and conditions, different benefits for system integrator or VAD or resellers. Partners fall into the same programme but have to subscribe and qualify for different kinds of streams. For system integrators you need to show a number of people trained on applications. If you are reseller you do not need to do that.
How are distributor partner managed under the Partner Network programme?
Di Ianni: We have completed the VAD selection for both Oracle hardware and software products in this part of the world. We went through an assessment and compliance exercise, which was done at the corporate level. We are trying to have one VAD structure for both hardware and software. That has just been concluded fairly recently and it should already be in place in this part of the world.
What are the benefits of having a single VAD structure for both hardware and software?
Di Ianni: What you will see is VADs expanding their business because now they have either hardware to sell or software to sell depending on where they are coming from. It is a great opportunity for our VAD and channel partners. We have so many products we will never be able to sell them directly or all of them to all our customers. So partners play very strongly in our economy here.
What is the partner involvement around Oracle training centres?
Di Ianni: Depending on the country we may have Oracle University. Oracle University does have partners quite often for delivery of certifications. We select the partners and they go through as assessment process. In Dubai we have our own Oracle University.
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Regional Update
– Al Mazoon Group and TCS are implementing Oracle E-business Suite for Ministry of Education, Saudi Arabia. The Suite is meant to automate and streamline inter department processes including finance and administration and data consolidation to avoid inconsistency and redundancy. The solution includes Financials, Human Resources, Payroll, Purchasing, Property Manager, Project Management, Oracle WebCenter.
– Qatar based Manai Trading software division is migrating Hamad Medical Corporation’s Oracle E Business Suite to an Oracle Exalogic and Exadata platform. This move is meant to cope with the requirements of 15,000 users and business growth of 20%. The solution consists of partial racks of Exadata High Performance Engineered System, partial rack Exadata Engineered System, media servers, tape library, Database Enterprise Edition, Real Application Cluster, Secure Backup, Exadata Storage Software.
– Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, is deploying Exadata Database Machine X2-2 for its database applications including OLTP, OLAP, data warehousing and other mixed workloads. The platform is meant to benefit high availability, lower storage and licensing costs, intensive workload execution and end user productivity. The solution includes Exadata Storage Software, Database 11g, Partitioning Tuning and Diagnostic, Real Application Clusters, Automatic Storage Management.
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