Sun Channel Chief Gary Grimes To Retire

Grimes, vice president of partner management and sales operations, will remain with Sun until December as his successor, Greg Stroud, transitions into his new role as vice president of iForce partner sales.

Stroud, who was employee No. 45 at Sun, has been with the company for more than 20 years. Most recently, he was vice president of the strategic partner area, with responsibility for global systems integrators such as Accenture, BearingPoint and Deloitte and Touche, as well as ISVs. Stroud will carry over those responsibilities to his new position, uniting all of Sun's channel partners into a consolidated organization.

Grimes said he has been considering retiring for several months and is doing so strictly for personal reasons, a notion reiterated by Stroud and other Sun employees. "It's time to spend more time on the ground and less time on United or American Airlines," Grimes told CRN earlier this week. Grimes, 57, said he has a second grandchild on the way and his youngest daughter is getting married in August, so he's looking forward to spending more time with his family.

Grimes assumed the position to lead Sun's channel just after the dot-com bust three years ago, when channel partners were disillusioned with Sun because the vendor took so much business direct during the booming early days of the Internet explosion. Under his direction, Sun's iForce Partner Program has reinforced the vendor's commitment to partners, and Sun recently realigned its channel efforts to merge its disparate partner communities and launch a concerted sales engagement effort to help partners better collaborate with Sun in the field.

"When you think of the variety of changes under his reign and the percentage of business that has moved to the channel, it's a phenomenal accomplishment," said Anna McDermott, CEO of GE Access, a Westminster, Colo.-based Sun distributor.

Sun's channel business has increased to 54 percent of its total revenue, up from 40 percent a couple of years ago. The company has stated a goal of 65 percent to 70 percent of business through the channel.

McDermott highlighted Grimes' efforts to reorganize Sun's VAR council as one example of Sun's renewed channel commitment. Sun recently consolidated its software and hardware VAR councils into one group. "They now have the approach to identify the issues that resellers want to see changed, and they have a team to go off and work on those," McDermott said. "That is a fundamental change that shows that Sun is listening to its customers."

Grimes also has been effective to spreading the channel gospel to his peers at Sun, McDermott said. "Gary by himself can't turn the switch. He has driven tremendous influence that has turned into benefits and opportunities for the channel," she said. "I personally will miss him quite a bit. He really understands what partnering means in business."

Grimes said he's pleased with what he accomplished in his time as Sun's channel chief and thought it was the right time to pass the reins to someone else. "[When] I took over the national organization, it was a really tough time," Grimes said. "What I wanted to do were two things. One was to refresh our business proposition for the partner community and help them get back on their feet. And second--and this was at least as important--was to try to put a sense of optimism into the channel and reinvigorate our commitment to the channel and let them know they are part of a strategy we can't live without."

Grimes said he feels he has accomplished those tasks and that Sun is better-positioned than ever before to help the channel grow more sustainable revenue through their relationship with the vendor.

Since in his new role Stroud will integrate responsibilities for Sun's ISV, application provider and strategic integrator partners within the jurisdiction of the VAR and distributor channel, Sun has now completed the task of bringing all its various channel partners under one umbrella organization, he said.

"Over the last couple of years, we've been unifying the channel strategy out of the business units moving that into a single partner framework," Stroud said. "There is a whole slew or reasons why we're doing that. One is that we need to provide clarity about what we're doing, and two is that engagement matters. And we're very focused about enriching the engagement for the partner community."

Stroud said he largely will build on the channel strategy that Grimes put in place, a plan he is evolving into what he calls "the three R's": reach, relationship and revenue. "The plan is about how we extend industry, business and market reach through partners," Stroud said. "I believe if we have clarity around the reach, we will develop relationships that bring in revenue, which means new business for the partner community and new business for Sun."

Stroud said he hasn't worked out all the details on how he will set up his organization, but he added that out of the gate he likely will delegate channel responsibilities by partner type.

Grimes said that once he finishes his work helping Stroud transition to his new role, he might be interested in doing freelance consulting work or serving on company boards. However, Grimes said don't expect him to resurface in another full-time industry position.

"I'm not interested in full-time employment," Grimes said. "I'm fortunate that I'm in a position where I can retire now. Thirty-six years [in the workforce] is enough for me."

SCOTT CAMPBELL contributed to this story.