MOCA Gives Sun Partners The Tools To Shine In Services

The new features to the Sun Services Center within Vortex are aimed at helping solution providers take advantage of delivering more services in conjunction with Sun, which is continuing its push to make services a larger part of its overall business, said Bill Page, executive vice president of MOCA, El Segundo, Calif.

Sun has been working to differentiate its services offerings from competitors IBM and Hewlett-Packard, and packaging services as SKUs that partners can offer is a big part of that, Page said.

"The Sun Services subset has become the fastest-growing subset in our Sun business," Page said. "Sun Services is a full-time job. The business [at MOCA] was up 40 percent in calendar 2004 over 2003."

The updates to Vortex include tools that will help MOCA resellers manage different types of billing scenarios than the standard product sale, Page said.

"One of the issues VARs face is they don't have systems, the data-capture, to deal with annuity streams," Page said. "Well, Arrow does, and we can help them get through that learning curve."

The enhanced Vortex tool includes a budgetary online quoting tool that enables MOCA resellers to manage and run their own quotes, while allowing customers to process multiple quote scenarios. Also new is automated delivery of contract booking packages, which allows VARs to process Sun Services contracts and booking in realtime.

Helio Solutions, a Santa Clara, Calif.-based solution provider, has branded its own tool using data culled from Vortex, said Dave Condensa, president and CEO.

"We provide a secure log-in for our customers so they can also track and see what they're doing on their own. It's a very powerful tool to have that information at your fingertips and the ability to mine your install base for upgrade and attach rate opportunities," Condensa said.

Santa Clara-based Sun's goal is to offer a standard model for how services can be delivered by partners, and then allow partners to customize the service as part of their value-add, said Don Grantham, senior vice president of global customer services at Sun.

SCOTT CAMPBELL contributed to this story.