Sun Looks To SMB Market, Broader Customer Base

Sun Microsystems

Here at Sun's iForce Partner Summit 2002, Jabbar said the SMB market "has the single largest GDP on the planet" and called on solution providers to help the company get into this market.

"We have not done a good job going after this space, and it is a huge, untapped market," he said.

Jabbar said the company must also change its mix of customers and broaden into new verticals including life sciences, energy, government, retail and health care.

In 1998, 60 percent of its sales were to telco, financial and government customers, said Jabbar. Last year, more than 50 percent of its sales were telco and financial customers. "We want a more balanced portfolio," said Jabbar.

Despite a heavy reliance on these customers and other financial difficulties, Sun has not lost unit volume market share in the Unix space, said Jabbar.

"It's been a tough, tough 12 to 18 months," said Jabbar, who later added that more than 600 of Sun's customers had filed for Chapter 11. "I would like to think we are in the tail end. No economic recession has lasted longer than 16 months, and we're in about month 15."

Moving forward, Sun's sales priorities include market share and sequential growth as well as "harvesting the low-hanging HP/Compaq watermelons."

Jabbar said that over the past four weeks, 80 percent of the customers he spoke to were looking for alternatives to the HP platform.

"HP has a confused end-user base with too much of their time being focused on the proxy battle. It is our opportunity to engage those customers," he said.

In January, Sun unveiled its customer engagement model in which Sun assigns a general manager to corporate accounts. Today, Sun has 50 to 75 accounts in the United States. The company expects to increase that number to 100 to 150 globally and has seen already seen success with the implementation, according to executives.

The company also wants to leverage its channel model. According to Jabbar, there is never a conversation among executive management in which they are not considering how to leverage its partner model.

"I want to make sure we are working closely with you and that we never surprise you. We may not always agree on everything, but we have the commitment to solve differences to each of our own satisfaction. . . . We've placed our bets, and they are on you," he said, referring to partners.