Hard Facts: September 23, 2002

Eight of the 11 vendors that CRN queries solution providers about showed increases in overall satisfaction levels last month. Companies such as Lexmark, IBM, HP-Compaq and Toshiba led the way with particularly strong gains.

In most cases, these gains were fueled by an increase in the percentage of solution providers satisfied with vendor channel programs, and also by declines in the percentage of dissatisfied solution providers. In the case of HP-Compaq, for example, 54 percent of solution providers expressed satisfaction with channel programs in August, up from 47 percent in July. At the same time, the percentage of dissatisfied solution providers fell from 20 percent to 15 percent.

Only EMC, Sun Microsystems and ViewSonic saw overall channel satisfaction ratings fall in August. For the latter two vendors, however, the magnitude of the decline was minimal. For EMC, the drop can be traced to a sharp increase in the percentage of dissatisfied solution providers.