Only Time Will Tell

You've gotta hand it to Sun Microsystems. It rarely wastes time finding competitive windows left ajar by its rivals, jimmying them open and climbing through. It even has appointed a Chief Competitive Officer to exploit these opportunities.

Sun has focused considerable energy on making its professional services arm appear more friendly to partners than IBM Global Services. Considering all the angst over the conflict posed by vendor services arms, this seems like a reasonable strategy.

HEATHER CLANCY Can be reached via e-mail at hclancy@cmp.com.

Over the next year, Sun plans to unfurl programs it hopes will inspire solution providers to invest in reselling and delivering Sun-branded services. Delivery partners, in particular, will be expected to learn and apply the same Sun methodology as the vendor's internal services personnel. This goes for things like data center readiness, security assessments, Java architecture and (in the future) server consolidation.

It sounds good in theory, but practice is altogether another thing.

One big unresolved question is: What happens if a solution provider already has developed a sound methodology for one of these services? Doesn't the value of that company lie in its ability to offer the best solution for each client's particular business problem, and in its ability to offer customization based on a core set of skills?

Research released last week by the Information Technology Services Marketing Association (ITSMA) indicates vendor services organizations have a pretty poor track record when it comes to using business partners to deliver services. Survey respondents estimated they turned to partners in approximately one-quarter of their engagements, and partners accounted for about 14 percent of their total services revenue. Their main concerns: how to price services so partners could resell them profitably and how to prevent price erosion.

Those issues aside, these numbers will rise if vendors change their internal sales and compensation strategies to support engagements that include partners. But this will take time.

The role of vendor services efforts will be reinterpreted during the next 12 months. To a large extent, it will be up to independent services players to help determine whether vendors deserve a starring or a supporting role.

Who's treating you right? Contact HEATHER CLANCY, Editor/Strategy at CRN, at hclancy@cmp.com.