Deloitte takes over $11m Oracle partner Dataweave

Deloitte Australia has taken over Sydney-based Oracle integrator Dataweave, the company run by former Oracle Australia GM and channel boss Norm Weaver.

The deal, which was effective on 1 June, sees 40 people from Dataweave join Deloitte. Weaver told CRN that staff would move across to Deloitte premises.

Deloitte avoided using the term "acquisition" to describe the deal, though CRN understands it was a commercial transaction.

Dataweave has placed four times in the CRN Fast50 and turned over $10.9 million in revenue in its 2013-14 financial year. The firm was established in 2006 and has offices in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.

It has been spearheading a landmark Oracle identity management project for the NSW GovDC Marketplace, putting it first in line to deliver identity services to potentially hundreds of thousands of state government users.

The project helped Dataweave secure the inaugural Editors Award at the 2015 CRN Fast50.

Deloitte’s Oracle practice lead, Craig Smith, agreed that the takeover was a response to demand from customers around the transition to cloud solutions.

As well as consultancy services and system integration, Dataweave offers managed services, software licenses and hardware services. Last year, Dataweave acquired Sydney-based Oracle services provider The Portcullis Group, which was behind one of the first deployments of Oracle R12.2.2 in the world.

Deloitte’s size will provide the opportunity to do more deals on the scale of the GovDC project, said Weaver. Deloitte has more 6,000 people in 14 offices in Australia, and had $1.2 billion in revenue for the financial year ending 31 May 2014.

“If you’re a small company of 40-50 people, it’s just difficult to do very large deals or large projects from a risk management perspective and getting the customer convinced to sign up from a risk management perspective,” he told CRN.

He also pointed to Deloitte’s financial advisory practise as skills that will complement Dataweave’s key business areas in ERP and financial systems.

Deloitte’s growing IT credentials

Among the 'Big Four' audit firms, Deloitte has been perhaps the most acquisitive in growing its IT channel credentials. In December, it brought across the team from IBM partner The Lonsdale Group, which counted Rio Tinto, Komatsu, Vic Roads and Toll as clients.

In September 2013, Deloitte Digital acquired Brisbane-based IT web-management firm Digicon, then in October 2013, it took over Quattro and NXG, which specialise in customer relations management software and SAP solutions respectively.

Deloitte also partners with local social analytics firm Digivizer late last year, as well as expanding its reseller relationship with Oracle and SAP earlier in the year. Deloitte is also a Google Apps and Google Chrome reseller.

Last year, Deloitte Private unveiled its home-grown accounting platform Connect, designed to integrate with MOB, Xero and other accounting products.