Oracle & Sun: More questions than answers.

Channel Matters has been speaking to Sun resellers, and Sun channel execs to explore the impact to the Sun channel community of the Oracle acquisition. While there is more confusion than clarity - a few key themes emerge. There is very little Oracle competency in the Sun channel. Sun partners do not focus on Oracle implementations - only the hardware needed to make Oracle work. Oracle has built a strong channel of integration and implementation services firms that have focused successfully on this segment. None of these firms have any interest in selling hardware.

Sun’s commitment to channels has been strong for the entire history of the company. However, Oracle’s intermittent channels commitment and preference for taking even small deals direct -has long alienated many a reseller who tried to partner with them. Case in point: Avnet is Oracle’s largest distributor in the US and does only about $50 mil a year in Oracle revenue —- a pittance for a company that will do north of $20 bil this year [not including Sun] . You don’t have to look to far in the channels ecosystem to find a reseller with a “…I got burned by a Direct Oracle rep story” . Just ask GE Access [ now Avnet] — who dropped Oracle several years ago after repeated Direct verse Channel conflicts that went unresolved to the channels liking.

Sun has very few resellers who have invested in proprietary software apps [ a logical synergy with an Oracle Sun integrated solution]. Most Sun resellers are solving IT Datacenter hardware problems with a mix of Server / Storage and maybe some VMware integration. Customers implementing Oracle invariably seek out implementation services from firms other than their hardware reseller.

What about Oracles significant partnership with HP’s Servers ? Does Oracle really want to begin competing with the likes of HP and IBM in this space? Wouldn’t they much prefer to leave hardware decisions to their customers — many of whom have aligned with non Sun vendors for some very good reasons [ volume purchases, reseller support, etc.]

More questions than answers for the channel with this one — but in the unlikely event that Oracle actually holds on to the Sun Server business - expect some channel storms on the horizon.