Hard Facts: March 4, 2002

Compaq has seen the most dramatic increase: After plunging to a low of 29 percent in September 2001, the percentage of solution providers satisfied with Compaq's channel program reached 43 percent in January 2002. Even so, this has only been enough to get Compaq back to where it was in mid-2001, prior to the announcement of the proposed Compaq-HP merger.

>> Compaq and Hewlett-Packard are registering higher channel satisfaction scores even in the face of a raucous debate over the proposed merger of the two giants. The news isn't as good over at Cisco where satisfaction scores are sinking because of channel tensions.

Despite the gain, Compaq's satisfaction rating still remains significantly lower than HP's rating. In January, for example, 52 percent of solution providers expressed satisfaction with HP's channel programs, 9 percentage points above the comparable figure for Compaq.

This gap, and the fact that it has actually widened since CRN began surveying channel satisfaction in February 2001, only adds more questions to the raucous debate over the Compaq-HP merger.

Other vendors have not fared as well as these two vendors in recent months. The most prominent example is Cisco Systems, whose satisfaction rating has dropped 7 points since September.

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Once the highest rated among the 12 major hardware vendors CRN surveys, Cisco has fallen back amid increased tensions with solution providers over issues such as discounting, rules of engagement and new requirements for technology specializations.