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“We would stand up from the mountaintop and say the reason we are No. 1 in this [survey] is because of the introduction of new technology that has made the IBM platform the best choice for the market,” Michos said.
IBM swept nearly every criterion to take top honors in the category of high-end servers in the 2005 CRN Channel Champions Survey.
IBM beat out its closest competitor, Hewlett-Packard, by 4.1 points, with an overall satisfaction rating of 82.4 points compared with HP’s 78.3 points. Sun and Dell came in third and fourth, respectively, with Sun just ahead of Dell, 75.9 points to 75.2 points.
IBM earned the best solution provider satisfaction ratings on both the technical and channel criteria in this year’s survey, though by a much slimmer margin in the technical area than in the channel area. IBM edged out HP in technical criteria by seven-tenths of a point, but won comfortably in channel criteria over second-place Sun by 5.3 points.
IBM’s biggest strength in the survey was in keeping solution providers informed of changes, where it was 5.7 points ahead of HP. It also cleaned up in the channel-program areas of ROI for the customer, technical education and vendor support over the life cycle of a project.
IBM has been doing a lot of things right over the past several years to bolster its leadership in the high-end server market, said John Freres, president of Meridian IT Solutions, a Schaumburg, Ill.-based VAR.
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“For awhile there, they weren’t innovating on the technology side, but I think they got smart,” Freres said. “It’s no longer the older IBM approach to things. They’re getting very innovative, and they have price points that are very competitive to both HP and Dell.”
Yet, it appears some solution providers think HP still has higher-quality technology than IBM. The only criterion on which IBM did not come in first was in the technical area of product reliability and quality, where HP pulled 3.7 points ahead of IBM. But IBM did take the prize in product scalability, serviceability, ability to upgrade and price/performance.
IBM has stepped up its efforts to create industry-leading technology that is an easy sell for its channel partners, said Richard Michos, vice president of solutions and channel marketing for IBM’s Systems Group.