Hard Facts: June 24, 2002

The good news is that, in general, solution providers have become more satisfied with these companies' channel programs over the past eight months. This is particularly true for Sprint, which has seen a significant increase in the percentage of satisfied solution providers, as well as a significant decline in the percentage of dissatisfied solution providers since November.

The bad news is that MSP/hosting companies still lag far behind hardware and software vendors in terms of overall solution provider satisfaction with channel programs.

This lag is due primarily to the stubbornly high percentage of solution providers that are dissatisfied with MSP/hosting company programs,percentages that are double or even triple those seen for hardware and software vendors. The survey results suggest that addressing the problems associated with this "hard core" of dissatisfied solution providers will go a long way toward bringing overall channel program satisfaction levels up to those routinely achieved by hardware and software vendors.