Hard Facts: August 26, 2002

Most individual software vendors saw increases in overall channel satisfaction levels in July, including Oracle, Veritas Software, Check Point Software Technologies, Novell and Computer Associates International. In many cases, these gains were fueled by increases in the percentage of solution providers that are satisfied with channel programs. Novell, for example, saw the percentage of vendors satisfied with its channel programs surge from 26 percent in June to 39 percent in July.

Microsoft, Red Hat and VeriSign saw overall channel satisfaction decline in July compared with June. After peaking in April, Microsoft's channel satisfaction level has dropped three months in row, reaching the lowest level since February.

Even with the increase in July, the overall channel satisfaction level for software vendors as a group remains lower than hardware vendors. But the July gap, at 5.6 percentage points, has shrunk to the lowest level since CRN began surveying channel program satisfaction more than a year ago. In July 2001, by comparison, the difference was 12.3 percentage points.