Oracle’s full-stack approach to analytics makes a compelling case for consolidation, helping partners create value by eliminating disparate integrations and unlocking ROI. This is particularly true for partners that are perhaps willing to abandon the typical tech-agnostic approach and recommend Oracle as the primary choice from a data and analytics perspective. If Oracle engages a broader external data ecosystem in the future, as discussed above, partners will need to make sure they look beyond the applications layer and leverage Oracle’s broad PaaS and IaaS capabilities for custom development use cases.

One could argue that many of KPMG’s steps, including launching partner-enabled industry IP, reinforcing trust, developing regionally organized operations, outlining a select few strategic partners, and investing in platform-enabled service delivery capabilities, resonate with the moves taken by many of its Big Four and large IT services peers. We see two differences: KPMG is laser-focused on exactly which of the strategies above to amplify, rather than taking a trial-and-error approach, and KPMG has an opportunity to ride the wave of a once-in-a-century professional services market transformation.

Rolling pockets of chaos and an overall cloud of uncertainty may be the best way to describe the first two months of the new Trump administration. One upside to federal contracts is that they tend to be long-term in nature, which provides some stability for all types of vendors with existing contracts. However, the current transition has been rocky, to say the least, as contracts are getting canceled, agency staffing is reduced, and the existence of entire agencies is called into question.