Sun Taps Cate To Broaden Channel Program Globally

In its latest bid to streamline its channel programs, Sun Microsystems has tasked longtime company executive Bill Cate with overseeing the expansion of its global indirect sales effort.

Sun quietly named Cate to the newly appointed position of senior director of global channel strategy, effective Feb. 1. The move reflects the official consolidation of Sun's various iForce partner programs into one overarching program called Sun Partner Advantage (SPA). Cate's responsibility will be to take SPA to a global marketplace.

Cate is well-respected by the channel community in North America. "A lot of the programs that are the foundation of the new SPA program came from Bill Cate's organization," says Mike Hurst, vice president of mature technologies at Avnet Technology Solutions, Sun's largest distributor.

Cate, who spent nearly 12 years as Sun's director of U.S. partner programs, says Sun is "very serious" about establishing and sustaining a consistent global channel strategy. "Depending on whether you are doing business in Japan, Indonesia or Arkansas, the partners should be able to leverage a relationship with Sun programmatically," he told VARBusiness in an exclusive interview.

SPA divides partners into three levels: associate, principal and executive. Most partners fall into the midlevel principal category, and typically focus on specific platform areas, such as storage or infrastructure software. Associate-level partners have less stringent requirements, while executive partners must meet the highest set of accreditations.

Sun has already achieved much of what it needs in terms of building the framework for SPA in North America, Cate says. That includes setting up competency requirements and deal-registration guidelines. A key change is that olution providers are compensated based on their investment and commitment to any one of Sun's core business areas, and not for the amount of overall products and services they deliver across platforms, Cate says.

Sun has four core business areas, which Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz frequently touts -- servers, storage, software and services. The fact Sun has aligned its solution-provider program around those four segments is significant, Avnet's Hurst says.

"What Sun has done with the four-S strategy has really delivered a simplified go-to-market plan for the partner community," Hurst says. "It has enabled partners to choose how they engage, participate and invest in their relationship with Sun."

In determining compensation, Sun also will measure such factors as whether the customer is new and based in a geographic location where the company has less market penetration.

"We are compensating more heavily in our portfolio and territory accounts where we have little or no Sun coverage whatsoever," Cate says. "We have sales teams that will go there with the partner, but much fewer resources. In those cases, the up-front transaction margin is typically better, and the back-end rebates paid are much higher as well."

How much higher depends on the program or initiative. "For instance, a storage program has probably two times more back-end rebate rewards than selling the same storage product into a large, existing Sun account," Cate says, adding the payoff could be as much as 10 times higher if a VAR signs on a brand-new customer.

So what should partners expect between now and the beginning of Sun's next fiscal year, July 1? Look for Cate to emphasize more programs that recognize specific value and consultative selling.

"We are trying to work on some clear guidelines for our partners and our sales organization on the kinds of value we are willing to pay more for," Cate says. "You will see a little more discipline in the kinds of guidelines our sales organizations would use when trying to determine what value really is."

To get a sense on where that is going, Cate says Sun already has put in place a "decision tree" to help deal managers and regional sales executives determine whether a partner receives extra points on an opportunity.

"They will ask if the partner is bringing a turnkey application to the table that is purely unique," Cate says. Other factors will include whether a partner has invested in physical resources, such as demos and proofs of concept, and has ties to ISVs involved in an opportunity.

"It's fairly easy to understand values that have been brought to the table," Cate says. "Where it becomes dicier is whether value is less obvious. Trying to put some kind of guideline on certain kind of applications is hard to do, but it's imperative."

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Click here for our Q&A with Bill Cate.