Sun Microsystems' woes over the past year are well-documented, and there could be some correlation with partners' bleak opinion of the company's channel friendliness. Sun's Unix servers were still fairly competitive in terms of partner proposals written and the vendor came in first in the average size of those transactions. But Sun also came in last in the crucial, rubber-meets-the-road value of deals closed. In terms of overall partner affinity, Sun was also dead last, trailing HP, IBM, Dell and San Jose, Calif.-based Super Micro.