Hard Facts: December 9, 2002

Vendors such as HP-Compaq, Sun, Intel, Lexmark and Cisco saw particularly strong gains, while smaller increases were recorded for AMD, Toshiba and EMC. In most cases, the jump in overall satisfaction levels were due both to an increase in the percentage of satisfied solution providers and a decline in the percentage of dissatisfied solution providers. Intel's overall channel satisfaction rating of 51 percent in October was the highest monthly figure CRN has recorded for that vendor since monthly surveying began a year ago.

The overall level of satisfaction declined for IBM, 3Com and ViewSonic. The magnitude of the drop was not overly large, however, and was due mainly to a drop in the percentage of solution providers that are satisfied with the channel programs.