With favourable businesses taxes, a rich pool of home-grown and migrant talent, and an enviable infrastructure, Ireland is home to many world leading technology companies and a burgeoning community of tech start-ups. This makes it fertile ground for ISVs, and it's Glenn Cahill's job to show them how Oracle can help them grow their business and increase revenues. We asked Glenn to tell us about Ireland's ISVs:

ISV News: What are your job responsibilities within Oracle Ireland?
Glenn Cahill: My role is to manage and grow the business with Irish software companies for Oracle, so essentially that means reaching out with the Oracle brand across the entire software developer landscape in Ireland. It's an interesting environment here because Ireland seems to punch above its weight in the software industry and there are quite a large number of start-ups both north and south of the border.

ISVN: What is your experience in dealing with partners?
GC: I've been looking after ISVs at Oracle for 18 months, and before that I worked in various sales and partner management roles at LogicaCMG. Previously I worked in similar positions in the mobile telecoms industry and I've essentially got over ten years experience of partner management and partner related roles.

ISVN: How is the Irish Alliance & Channel function organised in relation to ISVs?
GC: There's a team of four of us. I look after the ISV section in that team and we also have people looking after the reseller channels, which consist of mid-sized domestic systems integrators and then we have somebody dealing with the large SIs.

ISVN: How would you characterise the ISV landscape in Ireland?
GC: Ireland is extremely active in the software industry and we've got a lot export focused ISVs here and a there are a large number of start-ups coming out of Dublin. There's a lot of available talent, thanks largely to the number of American multinationals which have their European headquarters here. We're also seeing a big influx of immigrants, particularly from Eastern Europe, which is bringing a lot of very skilled and ambitious people into the country.

You could summarise it by saying we have a large number of small companies and a small number of large companies in Ireland. The majority of those companies are export oriented, because the home market is relatively small. They tend to be quite niche leading edge technology offerings within verticals like pharmaceuticals and telecoms or in horizontals that fit in with larger partner eco-systems like Oracle.

ISVN: How do you reach out to ISVs in Ireland?
GC: We try to use all of the various communication channels we have, everything from simply meeting and talking to existing partners, which I believe is the most powerful resource, to making use of the brand through advertising and PR with existing partners.

We also do a lot of specific campaigns around recruiting new partners or focusing on verticals like pharmaceuticals or telecoms. It's a case of making use of all the communication tools, our mantra is that you can't over communicate.

We also use a lot of the resources that are available to us within Oracle, as well as external entities like our Irish distributor Open PSL, and a company that we use specifically for ISV recruitment called Global Marketing Technologies.

ISVN: What is driving the take-up of Oracle products in Ireland?
GC: The first and most obvious reason is simply that Oracle has great products. But in addition to this, the products in the last couple of years have been repositioned and repriced to compete in a wider range of market segments against all our competitors. The introduction of the Standard Edition of the product set for the SME market has been a big boost for us. Ireland's software industry is export oriented because we have a small local market, the global IT market has improved in the last couple of years and the Irish market is commensurate with that

ISVN: In what ways is Oracle Ireland helping local ISVs to grow their business?
GC: We're very focussed on helping our ISVs maximise margin and minimise the cost of selling. In addition we work with them on a number of specific sales campaigns, such as a recent EMEA wide lead generation campaign with CNET that we've been plugging partners into.

On a more modest scale, in October we're holding a business lunch with a partner called Quest and have invited 20 senior civil servants to come along and hear about what we're both doing.

The other thing we do from a technology point of view is help our partners up-sell and show them how they can increase the size of their own sales and of course the oracle components in that mix.

ISVN: Have you implemented any local initiatives aimed at ISVs?
GC: The recent recruitment campaign with GMT has really been biggest initiative in past couple of months in terms of addressing the demand for access to Oracle that was out there. People in the past perhaps felt that we didn't reach out to them and the response has been really encouraging, it clearly demonstrates that everybody is willing to work with us if we reach out to them. We'll be following that with an Open your Windows campaign, which is an MS competitor knock out campaign.

ISVN: How would you summarise the benefits that ISVs can gain from working with Oracle Ireland?
GC: We offer a lot of sales marketing and technical support. As an organisation we are committed from the MD downwards to making as much of that resource available to ISVs as possible. We want to encourage ISVs to leverage the investment they have already made in Oracle. A lot of these guys have already put a lot of blood, sweat and tears, not to mention time and money, into developing and working with Oracle. So we'd like them to now come and reap the rewards of that by leveraging that investment through all the sales marketing and tech support we can offer them.

ISVN: Whom should an ISV contact if they were interested in working with you?
GC: Glenn Cahill
01 803 9193
glenn.cahill@oracle.com

OPN Interaction Centre
Alexandru Mitrache
1800 264 050
alexandru.mitrache@oracle.com