Sun Rallies Troops At Partner Event

Speaking at the event, which concludes Wednesday in Orlando, Fla., Masood Jabbar, executive vice president of Sun's global sales operations, kicked off his remarks by thanking his partners for staying with the company during what he described as "a tough, tough 12 to 18 months" during which partnership was put to the test like never before.

Jabbar acknowledged that channel conflict was a real and significant issue for Sun, but promised in no uncertain terms that Sun will get a handle on this and other problems.

"You have our commitment that we will solve our problems [and our differences to your satisfaction [and to our satisfaction," he said.

Jabbar and others laid the blame of their problems directly at the feet of the beleaguered IT economy. Jabbar, for example, noted that 600 of Sun's customers have filed for bankruptcy in the past 12 months. In an exclusive interview with VARBusiness, Sun president and COO Ed Zander, meantime, said the company looked at making dramatic changes, but ultimately concluded that its fortunes would improve once the economy did.

"The first thing you do when the bottom falls out is look at your strategy, you vision, focus, etc.," Zander says. "You then try to determine if you're having an execution problem, or a people problem.

"We concluded after talking to tons of customers that 80 or 90 or 95 percent of our issues was the economy--that we were heavily focused in markets that imploded, including telecommunications and financial services. We were the victim of a down, capital spending [phenomenon worldwide," he says, adding that Sun's technologies, initiatives and management team otherwise remain on track.

With the economy struggling still, Jabbar says the company has essentially been stuck in a prolonged pit stop, during which it has taken the time to prepare new programs and tools that Sun is showcasing this week. Among them are a new incentive program for partners, a new database of solutions, and a program to jump start sales of Sun One platform products.

Targeted at individual salespeople and technicians, the new iForce Rewards program offers individuals opportunities to earn points good toward merchandise for concluding training classes, achieving revenue goals or passing certification exams.

The new directory, meantime, is the culmination of months of work to put all of Sun's ISV, channel and solution partners into a single, online searchable database. While a fairly obvious initiative, Sun says amassing of all of this data was no small task given that some of it resided in a variety of data formats in a variety of locations by a variety of people. Soon, three cuts of the data targeted at customers and partners alike will be available. They include the iForce Partner Products Catalogue, the iForce Partner Directory and the iForce Solutions Directory.

Finally, Sun outlined a new program for partners interested in developing a specialty around Sun's new Sun One platform, which includes software from iPlanet, Forte and other software groups.

In addition to these new initiatives, Sun provided an update on a variety of other ongoing efforts. Sun noted, for example, that 18 iForce partners in the U.S. and Canada have achieved Storage Elite Accreditation. Meantime, 45 iForce partners have stepped up to participate in the vendor's Authorized Sales and Referral Program and the Authorized Delivery Program.