Hard Facts: July 15, 2002

The increase was largely the result of a sharp jump in satisfaction levels for Red Hat, Check Point Software Technologies and Vignette. Red Hat, for example, saw its overall satisfaction rating (defined as the percentage of solution providers that are satisfied with channel programs minus the percentage that are dissatisfied) reach 57 percent in May, up from 34 percent in April.

But even if the impact of these three vendors is discounted, the overall satisfaction rating for software vendors as a group still would have increased in May, although the magnitude of the gain would have been much smaller. Some vendors, such as Microsoft and Oracle, however, saw declines in their overall satisfaction ratings. The latter, for example, saw its rating drop to 21 percent in May from 28 percent in April.

On average, software vendors score lower than hardware vendors in terms of channel satisfaction. But the gap has been narrowing. In January, the rating for hardware vendors was more 12 percentage points above the figure for software vendors. By May, the gap was less than 7 percentage points.