MOCA Adds Services Functionality To Vortex Tool

The distributor plans to unveil several enhancements to its Vortex tool this week at its annual Net@Work Partner Forum in San Antonio, Texas, said Rich Severa, president of MOCA.

The new functionality within the Sun Service Center of Vortex will include a change/credit tracking tool that enables users to manage Sun contract change requests while also tracking all change requests and credit memos.

In addition, an online quoting tool will allow users to generate budgetary quotes and offer better pricing estimates. Effective this month, users also will be able to view all scheduled billings for monthly, quarterly and yearly contracts along with respective invoice numbers and amounts billed for Sun services.

Finally, a Sun Service forecasting tool will enable VARs to collaborate online with MOCA's service team to create a realtime Sun service forecast to view, export, change probability and add notes/comments in their forecast records.

"It's streamlined management of the Sun services business. From a tactical standpoint, partners will be able to track from start to finish the changes they make to the contract," Severa said. "It's a more robust tool to scope out services, utilize our budgetary online tool to get accurate estimates for the end user's requirements for Sun extended maintenance contracts."

The new Vortex functionality complements MOCA's support for new remote monitoring and management services offered through Sun, according to Severa. "It's not a recent development that Sun wants to get more managed services in sales cycles through the channel. About 70 percent of Sun's U.S. business is done through channel as opposed to direct. Managed services, professional services, is part of how Sun defines solutions. It's a profit opportunity for resellers," he said.

"It's an idea of leveraging Sun's engineering talent through the reseller to support these end users," Severa added. "Sun is absolutely attempting to enrich the value proposition for the resellers. There's a lot of challenges selling servers, storage, software or break/fix maintenance contracts. This can enhance profits by continuing to leverage Sun's brand."

Like other distributors, MOCA believes most of its solution provider customers are ripe to offer managed services -- with a little help.

"It's a mixed bag. Some partners are early adopters and spring ahead of the pack. They develop services on their own or partner with a third party. Most of Sun's authorized partners have not done more than scratch the surface, and they certainly have not done more than that with Sun's brand," Severa said.

MOCA expects more than 200 attendees from 70 solution provider companies at this week's Net@Work conference. Keynotes are being delivered by Julie Parrish, vice president of global channel office at Symantec; Tim Lieto, senior vice president of Americas sales at Sun; and Mike McGuire, vice president of U.S. storage sales at Sun.

Advanced Micro Devices also will host a general session. The chip vendor has grown dramatically with MOCA in the last year, Severa said.

"I talked about AMD as a new vendor last year at Net@Work as a successful operation, and that's only blossomed. It has strengthened Sun's regeneration in the entry server business," Severa said. "Increasingly, corporate networks are running Microsoft applications on Sun-branded servers using Opteron."

More Sun solution providers should look at AMD-based servers, even if they typically sell higher-end machines, Severa added.

"There is some reluctance among some of Sun's longer-tenured partners to want to stay with Sun high end that were walking away from the Linux and Microsoft space. But the demand is undeniable," he said. "And the best way to protect their investment in higher-end Unix is to get involved in the x86 end of the market."