Sun Outshines Competition: Portal To Productivity

Vendors are looking to further tap e-business to improve channel support and communication. In conjunction with its Channel Development Partners, Sun, for example, launched a partner portal that gives integrators and end users access to configuration tools and order-status information, says Gayle Rust, director of U.S. productivity tools at Sun. In the future, the vendor plans to offer other services, including quote generation, market development funds, sales and promotional material, and white papers, she adds.

To date, 30 percent of Sun's partners have registered with the portal, says Sharon Blender, who shares the director of U.S. productivity tools title.

HP, which took the No. 1 spot for its e-business program, provides information about price changes, product changes and rebates via its portal, says Achim Kuttler, director of PC client business for Cupertino, Calif.-based HP. The portal provides a central location for all reseller rebates, he says.

"It improves the cash flow of the reseller and eliminates a lot of administrative paperwork," Kuttler says.

In addition to relying on portals to communicate with their channel partners, vendors continue to connect via telephone, e-mail and face-to-face meetings. Sun earned a score of 75 in communication; Compaq followed with 73, HP and IBM tied for third with 72, and Dell finished last with a score of 69. Sun partly owes its high score in this arena to the simple fact that it limits the number of partners it has to communicate with.

"We talk a lot more in marriage terms," Womack says. "We can't even imagine how you have a relationship you call a partnership with 10,000 companies." By talking directly to its solution-provider base, Sun can work on problems, issues and concerns, and communicate product and strategy directions directly to its solution providers, he adds.

When it comes to presales support, partners voted Sun the top provider with a score of 75. HP and Compaq tied for second with 73, and IBM followed with a score of 70. On the postsales support side, Sun and HP tied for first with scores of 78, while IBM and Compaq both followed with scores of 76.

"We have been revamping a lot of sales support because we have a lot of different products and product lines," HP's Kuttler says. The company has been synchronizing and simplifying both its processes and product lines. In addition, it has given solution providers access to dedicated technical-support staff, both on-site and on-call, and provided toll-free support numbers, he says.

Simplicity is also the word at IBM.

"Like anything else, people want simplicity all the time, and they don't want to get caught up in too many specific programs," Vitagliano says. "We now have a whole series of training and certification programs we offer through our PartnerWorld program. It allows our partners to take advantage of e-business skills and certification through an interactive site."

Despite its top-place overall showing, Sun placed third for solution providers' loyalty. Houston-based Compaq took the leadership position, followed closely by IBM.

The reasons for Sun's lower loyalty rating could be twofold, Womack says. Last year, he says, some solution providers were concerned about Sun's prominent role in the Internet revolution.

"A lot of our traditional, long-term partners thought the attention and resources we put into that segment came at their expense," he says.

In addition, some integrators, dissatisfied with Sun's storage solutions, began offering storage systems from Hitachi, Womack adds. "All of a sudden, large chunks of their revenue from Sun were migrating to Hitachi for storage," he says. [Sun and Hitachi recently signed a deal under which the companies will collaborate on the development of storage software and will cross-license and distribute each other's storage software.]

Next year, Sun should garner more loyalty votes because Compaq's and HP's recent moves toward providing services to customers could negatively affect their partners' business, Womack predicts. And the proposed merger of Compaq and HP, if it comes to fruition, could make partners reconsider their alignments. Such a merger would be likely to affect not only loyalty scores, but scores in a number of other ARC categories as well.

Part 2: Profit Potential

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