Arrow To Sun VARs: Oracle Is Here Like It Or Not

Arrow Enterprise Computing Solutions this week bluntly told its legacy Sun solution providers that they need to accept the fact that Oracle, and not Sun, is now their vendor partner, and promised to spare no effort to help them pull through the transition to partner with Oracle on its hardware and software products.

Arrow ECS, one of the two primary distributors of Oracle-Sun products in North America, this week held its first Net@Work Partner Forum since Oracle in January closed its acquisition of Sun Microsystems.

Oracle's acquisition of Sun has caused much concern in the Sun channel community as Oracle transitions Sun solution providers, used to very lucrative channel program, to the Oracle Partner Network, which is much more tightly controlled.

It took Oracle nearly a year from the time it announced its plans to acquire Sun until the time it closed the acquisition, a time period that caused much confusion and concern in the channel, including at Arrow ECS.

Bill Page, vice president and general manager for the Arrow ECS Oracle Group, reflected on the confusion at last year's conference by the then-pending acquisition when he opened this year's general session Monday by saying, "Welcome to Net@Work 2010 .. How many of us thought we'd hear those words? When we left last year, we didn't know what to think."

Next: Get Used To It, It's Oracle, Not Sun

Tom Colleary, director of software practice at the Arrow ECS Oracle Group, offered a list of things legacy Sun solution providers need to know now that Sun is a part of Oracle.

Colleary told them that, as IT resellers, they have to accept Oracle. "You may run from them," he said. "You may embrace them. But you cannot ignore them."

Solution providers need to either completely commit to being an Oracle partner, or else do something else, Colleary said. "If you are going to commit, you have to go all in," he said. "You can't dabble with it. You're either all in, or you are not with them."

Solution providers need to make that decision of whether to commit to Oracle or not before all the good opportunities are gone, Colleary said. "There's a ton of low-lying fruit out there," he said. "If you are selling Sun but not Oracle, someone else is. Or you're leaving revenue on the table."

Colleary also said to learn to deal with the fact that Oracle is taking a direct approach to part of its new Sun customer base. "No avoiding direct sales at all," he said. "It's not going to change. It's something you have to deal with."

Next: Don't Wait

Oracle has three different direct sales organizations which legacy Sun solution providers may come in contact with, Colleary said. In fact, they may occasionally have to talk to all three organizations in relation to a single deal, he said.

However, he told partners to remember that Oracle has hired a lot of new people since the Sun acquisition, and so it is possible to get the wrong information when dealing with them. "So if you have an issue, engage us," he said. "We'll escalate for you."

Colleary said it is urgent that legacy Sun partners start getting Oracle specializations as soon as possible, and to take advantage of training opportunities. "We've been having boot camps about this, and I've been really disappointed," he said. "Only 10 to 15 people have been attending them."

Partners need to listen carefully to what Oracle executives, including Judson Althoff, senior vice president for Oracle's worldwide alliances and channels and embedded sales, are saying. "(Althoff) has 200 partners with specializations," he said. "He's still paying attention to you. But when he gets up to 2,000, he'll ignore you."

Colleary closed by saying that working with Oracle can seem complicated, but it can be easy for those who decide to focus on the transition. "Any questions I can answer?" he joked at the end.

Next: Start Thinking Opportunities

Sean Kerins, who in June took the reins as president of Arrow ECS North America, told CRN that his company is providing training on a variety of pre-sales and post-sales skill sets for legacy Sun solution providers looking to get moving with software from Oracle.

"We'll probably see legacy Sun partners get up to speed on Oracle software faster than Oracle partners will get to speed on Sun hardware," Kerins said. "And Arrow will be there to help."

The move into Oracle software for some legacy Sun partners will be a series of steps, Kerins said. "I think you'll see traditional hardware partners do well with software close to the 'metal,'" he said. "So we'll see them interested in Exadata (Oracle's new database appliance). But I'm not sure how quickly we'll see them do full ERP implementations."

It is important for Sun solution providers to get ready for the Oct. 15 deadline for transferring from the old Sun Partner Advantage (SPA) program to the Oracle Partner Network (OPN), Kerins said.

"As far as I know, this is proceeding according to plan," he said. "Any time one company buys another, there's uncertainty about the great unknown."