2011 Channel Champions: Support Satisfaction

How Satisfied Are You With The Support From Your IT Vendors?

IT solution providers selected CRN Channel Champions by voting for vendors in 26 product categories. When completing CRN's Channel Champion survey, VARs rate IT vendors on a number of criteria for three subcategories: Technical Satisfaction, Support Satisfaction and Financial Factors. For the Support subcategory, criteria typically includes: Pre-Sales Support, Post-Sales Support, Evaluation/Demo Equipment Policies, General Availability of Training, Education and Enablement.

The following 10 IT vendors were rated highest in Support Satisfaction subcategory.

10. Support Satisfaction: Cisco

Category: Unified Communications/VoIP
Support Satisfaction Rating: 77.5

Cisco took the top slot in the Support Satisfaction subcategory, easily beating its closest competitor, Microsoft, by more than eight points. Cisco's strength is in Post-Sales support, topping Microsoft again by more than eight points. Overall, Cisco's score was nearly 13 points greater than last-place HP.

9. Support Satisfaction: Microsoft

Category: Business Intelligence
Support Satisfaction Rating: 77.7

Among the five criteria comprising the Support Satisfaction subcategory, Microsoft's best score was in General Availability of Technical Training For All Solution Providers, coming in more than five points ahead of second-place IBM. Microsoft swept all the criteria within the Support Satisfaction subcategory. The BI category is new in 2011.

8. Support Satisfaction: Eaton

Category: Power Protection & Management
Support Satisfaction Rating: 77.9

Eaton's scores in Evaluation/Demo Equipment Policies and General Availability of Technical Training For All Solution Providers bested those of top-ranked APC. Eaton's highest score in the Support Satisfaction subcategory was 81.2, in the Post-sales Support criterion; however, APC beat Eaton in that criterion, and took the entire Support subcategory as well.

7. Support Satisfaction: Intel

Category: Processors
Support Satisfaction Rating: 78.0

Intel's highest score in Support Satisfaction was a 83.3 in the Post-Sales Support criterion, more than eight points higher than competitor AMD. In fact, Intel swept the Support Satisfaction subcategory by a much larger margin than in 2010.

6. Support Satisfaction: HP

Category: Systems & Network Management
Support Satisfaction Rating: 78.4

HP dominated two of the five support criteria for Systems & Network Management: Pre-Sales and Post-Sales Support. In the end, however, it lost the Support Satisfaction subcategory to Microsoft, #5 on our list.

5. Support Satisfaction: Microsoft

Category: Systems & Network Management
Support Satisfaction Rating: 78.5

Microsoft scored highest in three out of five Support Satisfaction criteria in this product category. It beat out lone competitor HP in Evaluation/Demo Equipment Policies, General Availability of Technical Training For ALL Solution Providers and Education and Enablement. Microsoft won the Support Satisfaction subcategory by a scant 0.1 point.

4. Support Satisfaction: Microsoft

Category: Video Conferencing
Support Satisfaction Rating: 78.8

Among the five criteria for Support Satisfaction, Microsoft's highest score was 79.9, which it earned in Post-Sales Support. However, that was not sufficient enough to best Cisco's score of 84. Microsoft did get the upper hand in the Evaluation/Demo Equipment Policies criterion, in which it scored 78.1, compared with Cisco's 76.7, Polycom's 74.7 and HP's 73.8.

3. Support Satisfaction: APC

Category: Power Protection & Management
Support Satisfaction Rating: 78.8

APC won three of the five criteria in the Support Satisfaction subcategory: Pre-Sales, Post-Sales and Education and Enablement. Eaton won the other two criteria: Evaluation/Demo Equipment Policies and General Availability of Technical Training For all Solution Providers. Still, APC's scores nudged out Eaton's, resulting in APC's subcategory victory. The vendor also won Support Satisfaction in 2010.

2. Support Satisfaction: Cisco

Category: Video Conferencing
Support Satisfaction Rating: 80.8

The only one of the five criteria in which Cisco did not score highest was Evaluation/Demo Equipment Policies, a criterion it lost to Microsoft. Cisco's overall subcategory score was two points higher than runner-up Microsoft's, and almost five points higher than last-place Polycom's.

1. Support Satisfaction: Cisco

Category: Enterprise Networking Hardware
Support Satisfaction Rating: 81.3

Just as it did in 2010, Cisco won each of the criteria in the Support Satisfaction category. This year, its highest score, an 88.4 in Post-Sales Support, beat HP Networking's 79.4 and Juniper's 79.3.

Cisco's 2011 margin of victory was larger than in 2010: Its overall subcategory score was more than six points greater than Juniper and more than seven points better than HP's.