Sun Picks Its Spot

But as that was happening, the Mountain View, Calif.-based computer maker kept its eye on the midrange computing ball and managed to win top honors from systems integrators, network integrators and MSPs as the CRN Channel Champion for Unix midrange servers.

"It's very gratifying to hear folks and the survey reflect what we've known about the core strength of our products," said Chris Kruell, Sun's group marketing manager for enterprise system products. "Our magic formula is paying attention to those spots."

Those spots, according to the survey, included strong showings in the areas of product quality and reliability, scalability, price/performance and return on investment.

But Sun had some close competition from IBM. While Sun took first in six areas measured by the survey, it came in second to IBM in the remaining five,among them, field sales and technical support. As a result, Sun's overall solution provider satisfaction rating of 77.6, out of a possible 100 points, put it just ahead of runner-up IBM's 76.2, followed by Hewlett-Packard at 72.3 and Compaq Computer at 69.9.

Sun made its strongest showing in the technical areas. One important area where Sun took a commanding lead was in product quality and reliability. Its 104 score here, weighted by the high relative importance that solution providers placed on the criterion, was 9.4 points ahead of IBM's.

Part of Sun's strength is that it controls both hardware and software, said Dave Martel, vice president at Expert Server Group, a Sun partner in Bedford, N.H. "Personally, the reason I like Sun is one chip, one [operating system]," Martel said. "It's optimized to the hilt. They really tune their machines."

Sun also took first in price/performance and product scalability. Kruell said Sun's Solaris operating system was a key differentiator in the scalability area. "Solaris is the operating environment that has been second to none in terms of delivering true application scalability for years," Kruell said. "Solaris and Sun have been scaling on a 64-CPU system for seven years."

"From a scalability standpoint, they have a solution across the gamut," agreed Jay McDonald, director of sales and marketing at Manageworx Infosystems, a Winnipeg, Manitoba-based Sun solution provider. "Their availability and reliability is definitely first-class."

McDonald also said that, while customers in the midrange segment are difficult to move off platforms, Sun is winning business from customers that are adopting new applications. "Their price/performance is rock-solid," he said. "Application and ISV support is very good. Solaris has been a solid OS."

In the channel areas, IBM trimmed Sun's composite score lead to 1.4 points. Sun came out ahead in three areas,return on investment, profitability, and training and certification.

In return on investment, Sun led IBM by 3.3 points. "It's not the size of the check you write for that one-time purchase," Kruell said. "The cost of the box is a very small component when people look at the life of the application."

IBM, meanwhile, pulled ahead slightly in field sales support and handily won in technical and marketing support.

As such, Sun still has some work to do in supporting its partners before claiming an undisputed hold on the Channel Champions midrange server title. But, according to the survey, solution providers clearly like the quality and scalability of Sun's servers and enjoy a good return on their investment with the vendor.

Sun has picked it spots well.