Channel Affinity Index: What Drives Loyalty?

Overall, the research shows that a wide variety of factors were deemed more important in different technologies and for different vendors, but Elbaum said three criteria typically received more weight than others: ROI, competitive displacement and services attach rate.

It's important to solution providers that end users can achieve a satisfactory ROI with a vendor's products, Elbaum said. "In fact, ROI is a prime determinant of the overall ranking. If you score low, it's hard to make it up."

"ROI is the name of the game," said TIG's Geier. "The value has to be there, not only from the ability to achieve the results, but in creating a long-term environment with the customer. For us, ROI has become the prevalent reason to sell stuff. If you can't make money selling a product, why sell it."

Regarding competitive displacement , vendors have to have programs that are very targeted and focused to score high, Elbaum said.

"Vendors that don't score very high may not have the special programs to allow the channel to target a specific competitor. Pure competitive displacement based solely on brand is hard to achieve. A corollary of that, co-existence with another vendor, is also a highly desired state, according to Elbaum. "Is it really plug and play? Those kinds of things tend to score very high," he said.

A vendor's cooperation with its solution providers can have an impact on how those VARs can displace the competition, Amax's Huang said. He cited winning a big education deal with a reseller customer because nobody wanted to deal with the support headaches that often came with using the legacy vendors. "Big companies have no personalized service. The support is not there," he said.

The services attach rate was deemed important for more than just the implementation of a product, Elbaum said. Training, re-engineering and other business process changes are also included. "That becomes increasingly important within the solution itself because it offers the channel a major revenue opportunity," he said.

The ability to bring more services into a deal helps make a solution provider more profitable and helps forge a better relationship with the vendor, said Jeff Albright, founder of Albright Consulting Services, an Evansville, Ind.-based solution provider.

"The services are probably most important to us. That's our core business. IBM is a good example with their security initiative with ISS. It's a golden opportunity," Albright said.