Tony Kender, Senior Vice President
of Oracle’s Global Accelerate
Program Office
FULL SPEED
AHEAD
ORACLE IMPROVES ITS MIDSIZE SOLUTIONS DELIVERY TO CUSTOMERS AND PARTNERS.
rofit sat down for a conversation with Tony Kender, senior
vice president of Oracle’s Global Accelerate Program
Office, about Oracle’s achievements in the midsize
customer space and what Oracle is doing to ensure that its
midsize customers can benefit from the same IT systems used by
the world’s biggest enterprises.
PROFIT: Why is the midsize space such an important
segment for Oracle?
MARGOT HARTFORD
KENDER: When we stepped back and analyzed our customer base, we realized that two-thirds of our application
customers are midsize businesses or government agencies.
When it comes down to it, Oracle’s midsize customer presence is the best-kept secret in the software industry—it’s
clearly an important segment that will help fuel Oracle’s
growth, as well as one that will benefit from our deep and
industry-tailored product development efforts. With all that
in mind, it’s clear that we had to look at how to improve our
ability to deliver solutions—both to customers and resellers.
PROFIT: What is Oracle doing to improve the ways it serves
midsize customers?
KENDER: We’ve done a very thorough analysis of the
midsize segment, and there are a number of very specific
offerings that we are delivering or plan to deliver to our
customers. One interesting thing we learned—the software
functionality needs of these customers do not differ much
from those of enterprise-class organizations. Some of the
largest companies in the world use our software, but midsize
customers have the same requirements for information that
larger companies have. The big difference is that midsize
organizations have fewer resources to throw at the problem
of information management, and many rely on a network of
local resellers and VARs [value-added resellers] to provide
