New Agenda, Old Issues For Sun

Some things, obviously, are very much different in the Sun world today. That includes the price of a share of Sun stock, which once bought a good meal at a fine restaurant but now barely covers a scone and a Tall Latte at Starbucks. What else is different? Well, Sun has new storage products and a better mobile solutions portfolio. It also has new opportunities for partners, including the Sun Storage Elite program and the SunTone Certified Consulting Services Initiative.

Still certain things haven't changed. Consider this week's agenda in Florida, where Sun will host its iForce partner conference. Sun executives, including president and COO Ed Zander, are sure to address issues foremost on partners' minds. Channel conflict. Gray marketing. Microsoft. They're still on the agenda.

But Sun's Gary Grimes, vice president of partner management and sales, says the company has plans for mitigating channel conflict and other ongoing issues. He expects to unveil a new registration program to iForce partners,as many as 600 are expected to attend. The registration program will likely be similar to one recently rolled out to OEMs. It lets companies record their involvement with specific customers. Grimes also expects to share plans for better sales engagement and partner management.

When Sun decentralized its iForce management last year, it didn't take into account national partners. Doing so helped improve sales coordination

locally but made it difficult to manage bigger partners.

Another hot topic: new partners. Current Sun partners believe there are too many. Sun's not so sure. It owns one of the smallest channels in the business. Having a closed, controlled distribution network was supposed to create a powerful, profitable franchise. But lately things have not gone Sun's way. Sun's sales continue to sink, while partner woes mount. Consider Sun's revenue for the second fiscal quarter ended Dec. 30, 2001. It was $3.1 billion,more than one-third less than the year before. Partner head count, too, has fallen. It's down by more than 80, due, in part, to partner insolvency.

To help reverse its fortunes, Sun has added Insight and CDW,two product-fulfillment houses. Now it's looking at adding more allies. Sun believes its current base of partners are not ideally suited to penetrate the SMB market with Linux products. One solution: get its two distributors, GE Access and MOCA, and its current iForce partners more involved with Linux. Another solution: Further embrace Tech Data.

"Tech Data absolutely could take us into a space [we aren't in today," says Bill Cate, director of U.S. product sales and channel architecture at Sun. "It will take a little work to define that proposition for those partners in that space, but I think we have all the tools in the bag."