Sun partner and systems integrator, Frontline Systems, is building out an Oracle practice to take advantage of the Oracle/Sun merger.
Frontline general manager, Bill Frangeskakis, said it started with three employees earlier this year focused specifically on Oracle’s database and middleware offerings, but had already grown to eight staff across Sydney and Melbourne.
The plan was to expand capabilities to the integrator’s other offices in Canberra and Adelaide.
“The acquisition of Sun by Oracle opens up opportunities for us to sell hardware and associated Oracle software,” he said. “The second reason was that through market reports, we identified business intelligence as a key issue on the minds of CIOs. We’ve experienced that ourselves and have had a few BI engagements in our customer base.
“We need to get our database business going, but we’re specifically looking at Oracle because of its position in the market and our legacy Sun customer base.”
Frangeskakis declined to disclose specific growth or revenue forecasts in its first year.
Information on how Oracle plans to integrate the Sun channel into the Oracle PartnerNetwork has been slow to market, but the vendor revealed new specialisations covering a range of Sun technologies last week. These encompass SPARC enterprise and mid-range servers, StorageTek tape libraries, unified storage systems and Oracle Solaris.
The Sun-based offerings were among 35 new specialisations available globally. An Oracle spokesperson confirmed all will be available in Australia. According to the vendor, training programs for partners under the Oracle PartnerNetwork were designed to fast-track their business to ensure they could have solutions up and running quickly.
Frangeskakis said Frontline was waiting on further information about the specialisations and how its top-tier Sun status would translate into the Oracle PartnerNetwork structure, but he expressed a willingness to continue investing.
“It’s too important for us not to,” he said.
Frontline’s customer base consists of financial services and telco companies as well as a broad cross-section of Australia’s enterprise community including Foster’s, Amcor and TabCorp.
Frangeskakis also dismissed concerns about Oracle’s well-publicised intentions to take Sun’s top 5000 global customers direct.
“Oracle wants a direct engagement with the top clients, but that doesn’t preclude us engaging in those accounts, as long as we add value,” he claimed.
“We don’t just ride off the coat tails of vendors – we add our own value, whether that’s in services, agility, speed of logistics or procurement. This planned engagement has not been a roadblock to use operating in those direct accounts as Oracle calls them.
“With any major acquisition, there are always going to be hurdles you come across, but we’re working through those with Oracle with the end objective of growing our business.”
