Hard Facts: October 28, 2002

Six of the 11 software vendors saw particularly steep declines in their overall channel satisfaction rating in September, compared with August. These included IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Vignette, Veritas and VeriSign. CRN defines the overall channel satisfaction rating as the percentage of solution providers that are satisfied with channel programs minus the percentage that are dissatisfied.

For these vendors, the data reveals that a significant part of the drop in overall channel satisfaction was due mainly to a sharp increase in the percentage of solution providers that are dissatisfied with channel programs. Veritas is a typical example, with this percentage increasing to 17 percent in September from 10 percent in August.

Other vendors, such as Check Point and Oracle, saw only slight declines in channel satisfaction last month, while for Computer Associates the rating was unchanged. Red Hat and BEA Systems were the only two vendors to realize gains in their channel satisfaction scores in September vs. August.