Partners Puzzled By Sun Bundling

The new Sun Customer Ready systems (CRS) program is similar to the Sun Floor Tile Ready (FTR) program launched last October in that it offers preintegrated hardware configurations to Sun partners and customers, said Raj Das, product marketing director of Sun's Integrated Products Group.

Under the CRS program, Sun also will preconfigure both complementary third-party software, such as Oracle databases or applications, and Sun ONE software on Sun hardware, Das said.

Sun is only providing basic integration to ensure the hardware system and the software function properly, which gives solution providers the opportunity to provide services, he said.

"Partners are looking for [us to do more and more base-level integration so they can focus on their specialization," Das said.

But Cliff Ulrich, director of the servers and storage practice at Dewpoint, a Sun reseller and systems integrator in Lansing, Mich., said Sun's motivation likely is to sell more software and professional services, not to help solution providers. "I want to be providing those services to customers myself," he said.

Usually, preconfigured product bundles "don't make sense" for solution providers, since much of their work is customizing products to meet clients' needs, Ulrich added.

Mike Landry, director of technical services at Burntsand, a Toronto-based solution provider, said he wouldn't put it past Sun to compete on professional services, especially since observers and even outgoing Sun President Ed Zander have suggested in recent months that hardware sales are lagging.

Sun has several pricing structures for the CRS program, Das said. For volume servers, Sun is charging $195 per system. For midrange and high-end enterprise servers, the price is $595 per system. For rack-level integration, the cost is $1,495 per rack.

Das said there is no extra charge to configure Solaris or Sun software, but Sun will charge $295 to preconfigure third-party software.