VARs Cheer As Oracle Hires Former Sun Channel Chief

Channel sources said that Tom Wagner, who served as vice president of North America partner sales before leaving Sun to go to Agilysys last summer, has been hired by Oracle to handle the company's new hardware division.

Oracle declined to discuss or even confirm the hiring of Wagner.

The new hardware division comes from Oracle's acquisition of Sun, which closed last week. As part of the integration between the two companies, Oracle has promised to continue production and future development of much of Sun's server, storage, operating system and software business.

Comments by many of Oracle's senior executives about depending less on channel partners have caused solution providers to worry about how they fit in with the new Oracle and about what kind of support their customers will get from the vendor.

However, many of those same partners this week seemed less concerned thanks to the news of Oracle's hiring of Wagner, who while at Sun was one of the industry's best-known channel chiefs.

Many legacy Sun solution providers still remember Wagner as the executive who did the most to clean up the 2007 channel mess caused by Sun's top executives when they ran a two-week 25th Anniversary Sale promotion under which certain popular server, storage, software and services products were made available to customers with discounts ranging up to 60 percent, but only for products purchased direct from the vendor.

Having Wagner on board is the first positive sign from Oracle about how it plans to work with the channel, said Mark Teter, CTO of Advanced Systems Group (ASG), a Denver-based solution provider and longtime Sun partner.

"Tom is an industry veteran and one of the best channel bosses in the business," Teter said. "Obviously, until we get more guidance from Oracle in regard to their channel program, ASG will continue to invest in other vendor partners and technologies that help solve today's IT problems for our clients."

Teter said the many challenges in the data center are leading to many opportunities.

"We have seen plenty of mergers and acquisitions in the past 10 years, and we always seem to thrive," he said. "We are anxious to bring the product lines and technologies that Oracle/Sun delivers. The sooner they can get their channel program in place, the sooner Oracle/Sun can deliver their promise to their stockholders."

Bob Olwig, vice president of business strategy at World Wide Technology, a St. Louis-based solution provider and longtime Sun and Oracle partner, blogged that he expects great things from Oracle with Wagner.

"With valued relationships going back many years, I'm hopeful and optimistic that Sun's senior leadership including Anthony Robbins and, recently returning, Tom Wagner will carry the 'partnering' torch forward within Oracle," Olwig wrote.

Olwig, in an e-mailed response to Channelweb.com, also wrote that Wagner played an important role in Sun's channel in the past. "I was disappointed that Tom left Sun because he listened to our concerns, took our feedback and began making positive changes to Sun's channel programs," he wrote.

Another solution provider who requested anonymity said that Wagner was a good man at Sun and was the first to go to bat for partners no matter what the issue was.

Oracle's channel is a broken one compared to that of Sun, which is a concern to channel partners, the solution provider said. However, the fact that Wagner is moving to Oracle is quite reassuring.

"I think that, no matter what happens, I feel better working with someone I know, someone I trust," the solution provider said. "One of my sources said he doesn't expect Tom to put himself in a position where he can't help."

The solution provider said Oracle's plans to focus on direct sales going forward can't work given the way the IT business works.

"It makes a lot of sense for them to use my army, my sales engineering and technical people, none of whom are on the Oracle payroll," the solution provider said. "Larry [Ellison] says customers want direct goodness? I'll line up 30 of my customers who will say the only time they see an Oracle sales rep is when there's an order in hand."