New enterprise buying centres are creating India’s next channel opportunity, says Huron Asia’s MD Sounder Rajan

Enterprise modernisation and expanding buying centres are driving the next wave of Oracle partner opportunities.

Enterprise technology buying in India is expanding beyond traditional IT leadership as business leaders take a more active role in shaping digital transformation initiatives. Traditionally, technology decisions were led primarily by IT departments. Today, business leaders are shaping and influencing transformation initiatives.

Speaking to CRN India, Huron Asia managing director and global Oracle team lead, Sounder Rajan, said, “Transformation initiatives built around Oracle’s application and data platforms are being driven by business leaders focused on operational outcomes, not just technology infrastructure.”

“These include chief risk officers overseeing real-time risk modelling and compliance systems, finance leaders pursuing predictive planning and autonomous finance capabilities, and HR leaders exploring workforce analytics and talent planning solutions.”

Similarly, supply chain executives are investing in analytics-driven planning tools that improve demand sensing, logistics coordination and operational efficiency.

This expansion of buying centres within enterprises is one of the several emerging white spaces for Oracle partners in India over the next 12 to 18 months, said Rajan.

He added that the growing openness of Oracle platforms to broader ecosystem collaboration creates new opportunities for partners to design cross-cloud architectures and modern data platforms.

In practice, this allows partners to build solutions where Oracle Cloud Infrastructure works alongside hyperscalers, including Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, enabling interoperable data, shared services, and distributed workloads.

Enterprises will require capabilities including multi-cloud observability, performance optimisation, cost governance, and automation.

According to Rajan, traditional providers are still focused on single-cloud or on-premises models, which creates an opportunity for partners to build specialised multi-cloud Oracle operations capabilities.

Clear ROI and time-to-value are driving faster deal closures

Rajan said several enterprise cloud initiatives in India are moving faster through the pipeline when organisations clearly define the outcomes.

Companies are not approaching projects purely from a technology implementation standpoint, but from the perspective of business outcomes, expected return on investment and time to value.

Where these elements are articulated clearly, deal cycles tend to move faster, he said. In such cases, buying centres are also more decisive because the value proposition is clear.

According to Rajan, one of the strongest spending drivers in India remains the modernisation of existing Oracle estates, particularly among organisations looking to upgrade fragmented legacy systems and move to scalable cloud environments.

He added that ERP and enterprise performance management transformations are also gaining momentum.

These programmes typically focus on modernising areas of financial planning, regulatory compliance, master data management and enterprise reporting. Compared with large ERP or infrastructure-led programmes, performance management initiatives often close faster because the outcomes and business value are easier to define.

At the same time, mid-market organisations are pursuing new finance transformation programmes to improve planning processes, simplify reporting and strengthen governance frameworks.

Industry-specific transformation programmes are emerging across sectors, including healthcare and financial services. In healthcare, modernisation is being driven by the need to migrate existing environments to cloud platforms.

Rajan said healthcare currently shows the clearest modernisation pattern, while BFSI, although still modernisation-heavy, is also seeing a higher share of greenfield cloud initiatives driven by digital banking, risk management and compliance workloads.

Integration, data and security complexities decide the pace of transformation

Rajan said the success of the transformation often depends on how organisations approach the transformation strategy from the outset.

Some enterprises treat OCI adoption as a transactional migration exercise, focusing primarily on “lift-and-shift” movements of existing environments. When programmes are approached this way, gaps often emerge in the pre-implementation strategy, which can limit the long-term business value of the transformation.

A more common challenge arises from integration and data migration complexity.

Rajan said enterprise environments consist of interconnected applications and data platforms, and integrating systems while migrating large volumes of data can create bottlenecks that slow execution.

Security and identity management alignment is another critical area. Without clearly defined governance frameworks, organisations can face compliance gaps, operational inconsistencies and security vulnerabilities, which can delay transformation timelines.

Rajan added that organisations also underestimate the importance of planning for steady-state operations after migration. While attention is often placed on the migration phase, operational frameworks, service-level agreements and support models are sometimes addressed too late in the programme lifecycle.

If these elements are not built into the transformation strategy early, enterprises may encounter operational instability or support escalations after go-live, he said.

From a delivery standpoint, these complexities are compounded by the shortage of specialised cloud talent in areas of integration architecture, cloud security and data governance.

Partners need broader delivery capabilities

Rajan said modern Oracle programmes require consultants who can work across applications, integrations, infrastructure and data environments rather than focusing on isolated components.

Capabilities around Oracle Integration Cloud, SaaS extensions, cloud-native security architecture and data governance frameworks are particularly difficult to build at scale, he added.

At the same time, the growing importance of analytics and intelligence-driven platforms is raising demand for skills around master data management, data governance and enterprise data frameworks.

To address challenges, Huron is investing in structured capability-building programmes to strengthen delivery teams across technical architecture, integration engineering, functional consulting and cloud governance, Rajan said.

He added the company is building multidisciplinary consulting teams that can support the entire lifecycle of Oracle transformation programmes, from strategy and design to implementation, optimisation and managed services.

This approach allows delivery teams to view programmes end-to-end, helping organisations reduce implementation risks and improve long-term transformation outcomes.

Partners using internal CoE to scale industry expertise

Rajan said Huron draws on a combination of vendor-led programmes and internal capability-building initiatives to strengthen workforce and delivery models.

While the company leverages centres of excellence and knowledge frameworks available through the broader OEM and partner ecosystem, including those from Oracle, it also maintains its own internal Centre of Excellence (CoE).

The internal CoE plays an important role in capturing insights from Huron’s client engagements.

According to Rajan, the company works closely with organisations as a trusted advisor on industry-specific transformation programmes, which allows its teams to develop a deeper understanding of sector-specific challenges and operational nuances.

These learnings are then fed back into the company’s internal CoE, where they become part of Huron’s knowledge base and help shape the design of future transformation programmes.

At the same time, Huron collaborates with Oracle on developing industry use cases and solution frameworks.

Rajan said this collaboration allows both organisations to cross-pollinate best practices and build solutions that combine platform capabilities with industry-specific expertise.

Beyond its own internal capability-building efforts, Huron also works with enterprises to establish their own CoE as part of large transformation programmes.

The objective is to help organisations build internal capabilities and institutional knowledge so they can sustain and expand transformation initiatives over the long term rather than relying entirely on external partners.