John Taylor, Interface Solutions

by Stuart Wilson, Tuesday 3 November 2009

John Taylor, Sun business unit director at Interface Solutions explains what he believes the Oracle-Sun deal really means for resellers.

Oracle’s Acquisition of Sun drives Growth in Sun Reseller Community

When Oracle announced plans to acquire Sun Microsystems back in April 2009, existing Sun resellers – and potential Sun resellers - would be forgiven for getting a case of the ‘jitters’. There were plenty of rumours in the press and blog community at the time suggesting that Larry Ellison would be looking to jettison the Sun hardware business at the first possible opportunity.

But, much to the relief of the Sun reseller community, Ellison hit rumour mongers with a real hammer blow by unequivocally stating his intentions to keep Sun’s hardware business running should the deal go through. And, he did this not just to colleagues and insiders, but to everyone with a vested interest (through global news outlets, the Wall Street Journal and Reuters).

In Europe at least, the Oracle-Sun deal has yet to receive its full stamp of approval from EU competition bods, but none the less there seems to be a new found interest in reselling Sun hardware. At Interface, in the last 15 months we have recruited in excess of 79 new resellers (over half of whom have already traded with us) and the pace of new recruits is far from slowing with news of the acquisition. Many of these resellers are part of Sun’s Open Access Channel Program community exclusively selling the x86 product range and tools from Sun.

This could just be down to Ellison’s impassioned commitment to the hardware business, but I believe wise resellers are already realising the potential wider benefits of working with Sun post Oracle’s acquisition.

For Open Access Program resellers, there are the ‘traditional’ reasons for working with Sun (which are likely to hold true post acquisition):

1. Resellers can access a premium brand name, which is a valuable tool for opening the door to new deals

2. Resellers can still benefit from being new to market with Sun hardware and getting in early with customers

3. Resellers can benefit from taking a different, unexpected proposition to their customers. Most customers still expect resellers to push HP, IBM or Dell solutions, but that no longer needs to be the case and customers are welcoming the opportunity to deploy Sun hardware running not just Solaris but also Linux and Microsoft

Second, there are the ‘new’ reasons:

1. Ellison / Oracle commitment

Larry Ellison has now sent direct messages about the x86 Server platform to resellers; he has sent his unequivocal intent to commit to Sun hardware and make it even more attractive for resellers. To quote Ellison directly, he said recently: “We’re in it to win it, IBM we’re looking forward to competing with you in the hardware business.” This commitment and future vision from the highest level gives customers confidence in the longevity of the product range and creates sales opportunities for resellers

2. Software Stack

Oracle possesses a very complimentary software stack to support Sun hardware – making it very easy for Sun hardware resellers to cross sell software, or more importantly, sell the complete Oracle software and Sun hardware solution. This software and hardware pairing is likely to get stronger post acquisition with Larry Ellison recently comparing the Oracle and Sun merger to innovation at Apple: “If an engineer can solve hardware problems simultaneously with software problems, they can do very well. There are some advantages of having a single operation,” he said

3. Access to customer base

It is very unlikely that Sun hardware resellers will not have existing customers using some part of the Oracle software stack already – existing applications, MySQL, Java, etc. This will open doors and make it extremely easy to make new sales

Plus, in similar fashion, Sun resellers are likely to be given access to Oracle’s estimated 320,000 customers - this strong sales potential is very compelling for resellers

In addition, in our own experience, Sun hardware resellers are now already getting access to larger FTSE 100 style customers (not just SMBs and local customers) because customers too can see the benefit of an Oracle Sun deal

Investment

It is also likely that Sun hardware will receive significant investment from Oracle turning over developments and enhancements quickly and creating new sales opportunities for resellers. At Oracle OpenWorld 2009 in San Francisco recently, it was actually Sun Microsystems founder and Chairman Scott McNealy that said “Oracle will boost developer spending”. At the same conference, Ellison also commented that, “Oracle would double the number of hardware specialists selling and servicing the Sparc and Solaris systems.”

We’re also not the only people to see the potential following the deal. Julian Fielden, Managing Director of HPC integrator, OCF plc (www.ocf.co.uk) recently told me that: “Sun has always had good technology. As long as Oracle can keep prices down, invest and continue to develop Sun’s technology in the right way then the deal has the potential to be good for the channel.”

Far from giving resellers the ‘jitters’, the potential Oracle acquisition of Sun is seen by many resellers as an opportunity to create sales and, as such, resellers are rapidly joining the Sun channel community to take advantage. As a key distribution player in Sun’s Open Access and Partner Advatange Program we’re seeing the signs all around that right now it is a good time to be a Sun hardware reseller.