In the first Oracle PartnerCast of the year, Niklas Iveslatt, Senior Partner at Arisant, talked with Dennis Morgan, GVP of Public Sector Channel Sales at Oracle, about recent wins in the public sector, including closing a Cloud at Customer project, similar to our work with The City of Las Vegas, with the City of Fort Collins, CO. Click here to watch the full PartnerCast.
Dennis Morgan: I’m here with [a] great partner from our public sector family, Niklas Iveslatt from Arisant and we wanted to talk about some great wins in our space here recently.
You’re from the Denver area, you were lucky to find an opportunity in your backyard, the City of Fort Collins; I think Colorado State University is there. If I were to frame it out, it would be: the customer was trying to support a new initiative in the city. They’ve put together an RFP an on-prem, basically a kind of support of that. They got some responses back and it was way more expensive than they thought and you were able to come in and position a cloud alternative. So, take us through how you got in and how you positioned it, how you worked with the sales teams and take us through that.
Niklas Iveslatt: [The City of Fort Collins] were a traditional on-premises customer. They had commodity hardware and software that had been running for years and years. So when this new initiative came around, you know, that’s what they knew and that’s what they looked at to solve the problem. However, that proved to be too expensive.
So we engaged with the Oracle sales team and took them through a process where we educated them on the different cloud options and they had some security and operational reasons that made it so they couldn’t go to the public cloud. Then we educated them about Oracle’s Cloud at Customer solution and the benefits and costs of that.
The process took two to 3 months where we helped them to understand what they were spending their money on and what they were getting. After that it was pretty obvious that Cloud at Customer was going to work out for them.
Dennis Morgan: So talk to us a little bit about engaging with the sales team and the collaborative selling we do in the public sector.
Niklas Iveslatt: Arisant has a lot of expertise with Oracle technology and Oracle Cloud technology. We also have a mature business around the public sector where we’re working with various cities. So we engage with the Oracle sales team and we work closely with them to understand the customer’s specifics around costs and risk and business objectives. Then we help to create a model where we can help to get the customer comfortable understanding everything you must consider when you go to the cloud; cost and risk, and maintenance. And that’s a very close relationship with the Oracle sales organization.
Dennis Morgan: And with that, you have a couple of Cloud at Customer opportunities that you’ve already got going and more to come. So what advice would you give a partner in our ecosystem, you know, here’s how you would do this and what I would recommend? What would you recommend?
Niklas Iveslatt: You have to get to know the customer; what they are trying to do. And then you can look at the different options and in many cases in the public sector, they can’t go to the public cloud, but that’s really not a problem for us because we have Cloud at Customer. So it’s a matter of educating and making sure the customer understands that they can take benefit of the cloud event though they aren’t moving to the public cloud.
Dennis Morgan: Well thanks [Niklas] that’s great feedback and it’s great to have you in the public sector family. Arisant is very highly thought of by all of us at Oracle so thanks for all that you do.
