Dissecting the Numbers

What a year it has been for solution providers and their vendors. WorldCom goes into bankruptcy. Qwest is under SEC scrutiny. EDS seems to be in meltdown mode. Sun tells VARs its financial problems are their own doing. Oracle and Sun VARs are screaming at their vendors. And don't forget HP merging with Compaq. And those are just the toplines. Each of the following 15 categories has a unique story. On the following pages, you'll get to share in the stories of all 67 vendors surveyed for the ARC, and see how

they stack up,what areas they are excelling in and which need improvement.

Remember bringing home report cards to your own folks? It's with that same sort of nervous energy that all the vendors greet the VARBusiness Annual Report Card. How will my partners grade me? Will they appreciate the efforts made during the course of the year,or will they pinpoint deficiencies that should have been addressed? That's the mindset of these vendors in the late summer months as they eagerly anticipate this solution-provider feedback. Across the board, companies use these results to improve how they are performing within the VAR community.

As you read through the category profiles, think about how your business interacts with each vendor. For example, Dell took first-place in the entry-level servers category overall, even winning the partnership subcategory. That's surprising, considering until very recently Dell didn't even have a formal VAR program.

There are other surprising facts within each of the following category profiles. The question for the winners is: How can you maintain your edge? And for the losers: How can you make up lost ground?

Indeed, how can any vendor? It's up to their solution providers to show them the way.

As if you didn't have enough to do.