Sun Takes iForce Exec Team On Road In 10-City Tour
Sun, Santa Clara, Calif., still will hold its VAR Advisory Council meeting in Orlando, Fla., in April as scheduled, but there will be no accompanying national channel summit, said Bill Cate, director of the U.S. iForce partner office at Sun.
Changes To iForce Partner Summit>> Annual national show cancelled in favor of 10-city road show
>> One-day events in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Denver, Washington, Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, Dallas, New York, Boston
>> Shows will consist of strategy and partner dialogue session with sales and partner management team, as well as hands-on partner workshops
>> Sun still deciding whether new format is permanent; will depend on partner response
Although sources said Sun is canceling the show to save money, Cate said that's not the case. "The cost of doing a 10-city road show vs. a big event in Orlando, I'm not sure if there's money saved or not," he said. "This will be a very resource- and time-intensive effort for Sun."
Sun changed the format of its partner conference because of feedback from partners, who said that attending vendor partner conferences take a lot of time out of their schedules, Cate said.
Another reason Sun cancelled the annual conference: The company recently reorganized its sales organization and appointed a new U.S. sales management team, and wanted to give the new executives a more intimate setting in which to make their first formal pitch to partners, he said.
Tom Kuni, president of SSI hubcity, Metuchen, N.J., called it smart that Sun wants to introduce the team to smaller groups of partners through regional events than to put them before the entire partner community all at once. "It's unfair to the new guys put in place to deliver a message when they have just come on board," he said.
The new executives—Rich Napolitano, president of Sun's U.S. Geographically Established Markets; Tim Lieto, vice president of U.S. customer sales; and Greg Stroud, vice president of iForce partner sales—will take part in the road show, which kicks off in San Francisco in May.
It remains to be seen whether Sun will permanently replace its annual partner summit, first held in 1986, with the new format, Cate said.