Sun Sends Some Partners Packing

Carl Wolfston, director of Headlands Associates, a Sun storage solution provider in Pleasanton, Calif., said last week he received a notice of nonrenewal of his Sun contract in January. Headlands started selling Sun storage about four years ago, when Sun had almost no presence in the storage market, Wolfston said.

Despite speaking with a MOCA rep, a Sun district manager and a channel manager, Headlands is still getting the runaround from Sun, Wolfston said.

"[The channel manager said I am the kind of partner they are looking for, and we should talk again [in three months," he said. "Last time someone from Sun told me that, it took six months just to get signed on as a Sun VAR."

Headlands does not sell much Sun storage, but until recently, Sun didn't have much of a storage offering, Wolfston said. In contrast, Compaq Computer supports Headlands fully despite relatively small sales of its storage products, he said.

Gary Grimes, vice president of partner management and sales operations at Sun, said official termination letters to 84 solution providers were sent about a month ago. At the same time, Sun has signed 41 new partners since the start of its 2002 fiscal year in July, he said during a recent roundtable.

Grimes estimated that 25 to 30 of the 84 former partners are bankrupt or having financial difficulties. Some of the terminations were related to gray-market activities, he added.

The remaining partners were dropped because they hadn't put enough sales and marketing muscle behind Sun products, Grimes said. "Maybe they had good intentions when they signed up with us, and because the economy went south, they didn't feel like they could invest," he said.

In the next several months, Sun also plans to devise a strategy for a stepped-up attack in the SMB market, Grimes said.