Hard Facts: July 8, 2002

Most major vendors, with the exception of EMC and Toshiba, saw strong gains in overall satisfaction (defined as the percentage of solution providers that are satisfied with channel programs minus the percentage that are dissatisfied). In most cases, these gains were fueled by solid increases in the percentage of satisfied solution providers. The star performer was AMD, whose rating jumped to its highest level since January.

Intel and Cisco are tied with the highest overall satisfaction levels with ratings of 50 percent (out of a possible 100 percent), followed closely by 3Com and ViewSonic at 49 percent. AMD and IBM follow at 46 percent and 45 percent, respectively.

Throughout the past year, chip makers Intel and AMD, as well as networking companies Cisco and 3Com, have scored the highest among hardware vendors. On a broader level, hardware vendors as a group continue scoring higher than their software vendor counterparts, though in the past few months, the gap has been narrowing.