What's The Score?

By Rick Whiting

The 2008 VARBusiness Annual Report Card scores for the three major data and information management software vendors are always close, and this year is no exception. IBM Corp., Armonk, N.Y., which lost the top spot in 2007, regained the lead this year after beating out rivals Microsoft Corp., Redmond, Wash., and Oracle Corp., Redwood Shores, Calif., in partnership and channel support.

While ARC scores in other product categories often vary widely between the top and bottom performers, scores for IBM, Oracle and Microsoft have been close for years in Data and Information Management Software. This year was no different with IBM's overall ARC score of 65 barely edging out the score of 62 channel partners gave to both Oracle and Microsoft.

Last year, Oracle beat its database competitors with a score of 67 with Microsoft and IBM scoring 65 and 63, respectively, illustrating how a few points gained or lost can make a difference.

"This is going to be a competitive market forever," said Steve Mills, senior vice president and group executive of the IBM Software Group, whose products include the flagship DB2 database.

As has been true for several years, Oracle outscored IBM and Microsoft in product innovation, winning top marks for product quality and reliability, richness of product features/functionality and technical innovation. This race is won or lost on scores for partnership and channel support. And it's there that IBM excelled this year. IBM took top scores in every support criteria, including presales and postsales support and training, and top marks in the majority of partnership criteria, including communication with channel partners and managing channel conflict.

"If I ever need anything from the [IBM] channel group, [I make] one phone call and I can get the help I need," said Nagesh Kanumury, director of the master data management practice at Perficient Inc., an Austin, Texas-based information technology consulting company that ranked No. 36 on this year's CRN Fast Growth 100 list. Kanumury especially praised IBM's presales and marketing support, lead-generation efforts and PartnerWorld portal. Opportunities to shadow IBM sales representatives also help generate business for Perficient, he said. Any complaints? Training, while effective, can be "pretty expensive," he said.

IBM's total score of 65 is up two points from 2007. The company's biggest gains were in product innovation, where its overall score put it second in that subcategory this year, compared with third in 2007. Those scores may have gotten a boost from the DB2 9.5 "Viper 2" database the company debuted late last year. Acquisitions in the last year, such as Cognos Inc. and its business intelligence software have also helped fill out IBM's offerings.

IBM has launched a number of channel initiatives in recent years to improve its partnership programs. It has better aligned its product and channel management, speeding transfer of information about new products to channel operations and so improving presales and postsales support, said Rachael Rusting, director for channel marketing and go-to-market in data management.

IBM offers channel partners what it calls the IBM Value Package that, for a flat annual fee of $2,000, provides presales and postsales tech support, education reimbursements, marketing assistance and software licenses for development and product demonstrations. The information management software organization also provides demand generation plans and access to free telemarketing services, said Nancy Toda, director of channel and SMB marketing for information management.

The departure of channels chief Rauline Ochs may in part have caused Oracle's lower scores for partnership and support. Ochs was credited with making Oracle more channel-friendly.

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