Oracle Corp. has launched the Oracle Cloud MSP Program. It's designed for managed services providers (MSPs) that want to monitor and maintain customer workloads on the company's Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). The formalized partner effort, which surfaces at Oracle OpenWorld 2016, essentially counters Amazon's popular MSP partner program for AWS.
First, the big picture: Oracle has spent the past two years or so accelerating its SaaS business -- predicting that the company will rank among the top two SaaS providers of cloud business suites. But in recent days, Chairman Larry Ellison has been talking up the IaaS business -- alleging that it's ready to leapfrog Amazon Web Services in terms of pricing, functionality and more.
MSPs: Profiting From Oracle Cloud Services?
The Cloud MSP Program -- part of Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) Specialized -- is the latest step in that effort. According to the company:
"The partner will be able to buy Oracle Cloud Platform based on the unique needs of the customer, package their MSP services, and sell the integrated solution through a streamlined business model. Partners reap the benefits of building their services on a world-class cloud infrastructure and customers get the complete solution they need to optimize their cloud initiatives – helping reduce risk, cost, and complexity."
Initial partners include some managed services giants -- such as Accenture, Atos, Cognizant, Deloitte, Fujitsu, Hitachi, Infosys, NTT / Dimension Data, TCS, Tech Mahindra, and Wipro. Sample services provided by the MSP partners can include: cloud advisory, service migration, DevOps, provisioning and orchestration, monitoring, 24x7 monitoring, incidence and change management, and cloud optimization, among other options, the database and applications giant said.
Managing Workloads that Shift to the Cloud
Hundreds of partners already wrap managed services around Oracle's hardware and software. But many of those partners got their start supporting on-premises solutions. More recently, some of those partners have managed workloads in third-party clouds -- particularly AWS. Moreover, an AWS Database Migration Service moved some Oracle customers into Amazon's data centers -- and off of Oracle's software.
No doubt, Oracle Cloud MSP Program aims to eliminate those types of defections, while unlocking new recurring revenue opportunities for OPN partners.
