Low-End Servers: IBM

The breadth of its channel programs helped IBM rise to the top in the low-end servers category of the 2005 CRN Channel Champions Survey.

IBM scored 77.8 points in overall satisfaction, winning the category for the second year in a row. Hewlett-Packard trailed by 2.5 points to come in second, followed by Sun Microsystems and Dell.

IBM swept all eight channel criteria with a channel satisfaction rating of 71.5—a solid 4.9 points ahead of Sun, the runner-up here.

“We are showing continued attentiveness to what partners are saying they want,” said Richard Michos, vice president of solutions and channel marketing for IBM’s Systems Group.

The CRN survey backed that claim up: IBM earned a particularly resounding 5.9-point lead over Sun in consistency of its channel programs and a 5.4-point lead over HP in responsiveness to solution provider feedback on channel programs.

One of the new initiatives IBM enacted over the past year based on partner feedback was an expanded bid registration program. Michos also said IBM improved its SMB Advantage program to include an additional 5 percent margin for VARs that register iSeries and pSeries server opportunities.

On technical criteria, it was HP that rose to the top with an 88.6, pulling ahead of IBM by 1.3 points. IBM fell behind HP in every area, but in most cases only by slim margins.

Bill Nemesi, a brand executive for Mainline Information Systems, an IBM partner based in Tallahassee, Fla., said IBM has made a concerted effort to bring technology from its high-end servers to its lower-end offerings in recent years. This has made its low-end servers more robust and reliable. “They’ve done a great job of sharing technology across all servers,” he said.

Nemesi added that IBM also has maintained consistency in its low-end server strategy over the past several years, something competitors such as HP and Sun have failed to do. HP was hampered by its purchase of Compaq, while Sun was late to deliver a significant portfolio of commodity servers, he said.

While IBM remains locked in a close contest with HP on the technical merits of its commodity servers, IBM’s dominant performance in channel-program satisfaction made it the clear Channel Champion in the end.