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TEAM IM Targets VMware Users Ahead of Oracle Cloud Launch

Written by Guest Author | May 27, 2024 3:29:42 AM

4 Min Read

Oracle data centre partner TEAM IM is on track to take its sovereign cloud services live in New Zealand on 1 August and is actively targeting VMware customers facing licensing hikes.

 

Director Ian Rogers told Reseller News all hardware had arrived and was being commissioned for the new business, dubbed TEAM Cloud, and the overall project was about two weeks ahead of schedule.

“We’ll probably be the first hyperscaler to go live locally,” he said.

 Work to prepare the data hall for a second region, Auckland North, was also under way.
 

A launch event is planned for 23 July and Oracle VP of cloud infrastructure Christian Linacre as well as the company’s head of Japan and Aspa Pacific, Garrett Ilg, would be attending.

Veteran industry figure Jason Barcham has also joined TEAM IM as sales director.
 

Barcham has spent over thirty years in sales, leadership and consultancy roles with organisations such as Computer Associates, Unisys, Sun Microsystems, Eagle Technology, Enterprise IT and Cognizant.

TEAM IM, formerly known as Team Asparona, had been a long term Oracle cloud partner and hardware and software reseller before winning exclusive country rights as an Oracle Alloy data centre partner last year.

Rogers said interest in was coming from a big mix on on premise users, customers of overseas hypercalers seeking to repatriate their data and others currently using local datacentre providers such as Datacom or CCL.

“When look at cost model it’s going to be quite hard for some of the existing datacentre providers to compete,” Rogers said.

Some might choose to “white label” services from TEAM Cloud, he suggested.

There was a lot of interest coming out of Wellington around what the company was doing, Rogers said

A lot of government agencies were running Oracle databases and seeking ways to address data sovereignty challenges. TEAM IM was also speaking to financial services providers facing latency challenges.

Others were seeking to move the dial on ESG and TEAM IM’s services were carbon neutral where Australia-based clouds were not. On top of that, hyperscalers were missing their own local launch dates.

TEAM IM is also pushing hard around VMware and price increases since Broadcom purchased the company.

"If you are one of the many organisations facing price rises of up to 12x on your VMware renewal license costs, we can help,” a LinkedIn post from the partner claimed.

The company said it could provide subscription-based VMware pricing, at a price that mirrored current licensing with an easy lift and shift for VMware stacks.

“This solution is easily deployed using an existing Virtual Cloud Network (VCN),” the post continued. “Virtual machines residing in our software-defined data centres can then integrate into native cloud services, such as TEAM Cloud Exadata and Database Cloud Services.”

With around 40 staff currently, TEAM IM is looking to open an office in Auckland in July and Christchurch in next 12 months and expand to 200 staff over the next five years.

Three organisations currently using overseas clouds were already committed, Rogers said.

“We have access to Oracle Cloud Lift services, a specialist team to migrate at no charge to the customer,” he said.

“Also Oracle workloads can take own license to IaaS then move to PaaS with more licenses.”

Non Oracle workloads could also be moved because TEAM IM could also deliver “bare metal”.

“We are going to establish our 24×7 support team here,” Rogers said. “We are going to build an ecosystem of NZ partners to help us and keep as much of the revenue as possible within NZ, especially around services.”

A partner manager was forging alliances with the likes of Accenture, Deloitte and DXC but TEAM IM was also aiming to build a group of ecosystem partners who could help with migration, implementation, analytics, governance, business transformation and more.

Before the Oracle partnership, TEAM IM spent 10 years as a specialist in content management, but the market size there was limited.

“It’s given everyone a new lease of life,” Rogers added. “With this we can talk to anyone.”

 

Author

Rob O’Neill - Senior Journalist at Reseller News