Hard Facts: February 4, 2002

For vendors such as IBM, Intel and Sun Microsystems, the upward trend over the past three months has been particularly strong.

In December, for example, 48 percent of solution providers said they were satisfied with IBM's hardware channel programs. This is an increase of 7 percentage points from September. Even with the improvement, however, this figure is still well below the 59 percent approval rating solution providers gave to IBM's software channel programs.

The results are similar for Hewlett-Packard and AMD. Some 56 percent of solution providers said they were satisfied with AMD's channel programs in December, up from 50 percent in September. Even beleaguered Compaq, at 39 percent, saw a sharp increase in the percentage of solution providers satisfied with its programs. But this figure still remains below those for IBM and HP, which both come in at 48 percent. The percentage of solution providers dissatisfied with Compaq's channel programs is still double that for IBM and HP.

Cisco Systems is a notable exception to the upward trend; its approval rating dropped 5 percentage points in December to 55 percent. EMC also appears to have lost some momentum; the percentage of solution providers satisfied with its channel programs stayed the same between September and December, while the percentage that are dissatisfied actually increased.