It Looks Like You’re Trying to Implement Some Oracle

I recently attended an Oracle workshop where employees of several past, current and prospective clients were in attendance. A member of our sales team was also planning to drop in. While myself and a colleague went to learn about Oracle offerings, it was also an opportunity for us to advertise the Zirous Identity Practice and our company’s ability to help with the setup and implementation of many Oracle technologies.

Most of the attendees were there because their companies had recently purchased Identity products, or were doing POCs to upgrade from their existing in-house solutions. I commented to my colleague that in some ways our pitch sounded like, “It looks like you’re implementing Oracle Identity Governance. Would you like help?”  We chuckled, remembering those much-maligned MS Word  popups, but then thought, “Is this actually an accurate assessment?”

There is a tendency by some to look to consultants as a glorified IDE or code generator. Just another tool to help you complete your code base. There are certainly companies who work this way, sending their employees to work as just another member of the client’s team, filling a seat and writing code. Other companies behave like large, requirements-driven, code generation engines. Send them your requirements document and they’ll give you a working code base exactly as you described it, whether or not it’s actually what you needed.

In this field of “automated consultants,” Zirous stands out. We have the technical expertise to turn requirements into solid code, but we also have the architectural experience to generate those requirements in the first place.  It’s easy to see where you are “in the trenches,” implementing a piece of code.  It’s harder to see how your piece of code integrates with and affects the codebase.  It’s even harder (but just as necessary) to achieve the “30,000 ft view” and see how a solution can impact your whole business and relate the solution to the ultimate business goals. Zirous can quickly get to this high level view of how a particular product or solution will impact a business because we aren’t working with just one business, or just one type of business.

In a former life I was a staff-aug contractor working with a rather large client on their database application. I worked with a lot of great people, most of whom had experience from other jobs before coming to work with this company. That being said, their entire focus was on one set of products, for one company. Take Zirous in contrast. In the past 2 years alone, I have worked on probably half a dozen different projects, using a dozen different technologies. I’ve been able to see the planning and decision making processes of multiple corporations and state and federal agencies, and have seen the way Oracle technologies positively affect their business.

With Zirous, you get so much more than an IDE, or a code generation engine. You get dedicated consultants with 5, 10, even 25+ years developing solutions, not just code. You get a team that has seen how Oracle and non-Oracle technologies have integrated to create solutions for everyone from small businesses to large government agencies. Your company will get a group of consultants dedicated to finding the solution you actually need to solve your business problems, and one that will integrate with both your current tactical needs and your long term strategic goals.