Clean Sweep In Desktop Storage

Western Digital continues to top its rivals when it comes to partner satisfaction. In the 2003 VARBusiness Annual Report Card (ARC) study, the company again set the pace in the desktop disk drive category, which included ATA and IDE products, outperforming rivals Maxtor and Seagate in every single category measured.

Notably, in most areas assessed in this year's study, Western Digital topped average scores by at least 5 percentage points.

"Western Digital has been a valued partner for several years; its service, reliability and focus have always been top-notch," says Peter Ramundo, general manager of PRN Computer Systems, based in Norwalk, Conn. "From the handling and speed of replacements to specials for their VARs, the support has been outstanding."

How does Western Digital account for its success in the channel? Richard E. Rutledge, the vendor's vice president of marketing, says the company treats every customer--from the smallest VAR to the largest OEM--with equal care.

"We continually optimize our distribution-channel product mix and service-partner programs to benefit VAR customers and their changing needs," Rutledge says.

In studying the numbers, it is clear that Western Digital's solution providers value the company's partner philosophy; after all, they gave Western Digital disproportionately higher scores when it came to partnership and loyalty than Maxtor's and Seagate's VARs gave to them.

Speaking of Maxtor and Seagate, they finished in second and third place, respectively, in this year's partner satisfaction study. In the four subcategories, they swapped second- and third-place finishes, generally scoring within one to three points of each other in various facets of the study.

More specifically, Maxtor achieved five second-place wins for the individual criteria--compatibility and ease of integration from the product-innovation subcategory, as well as partner portal, sales partnering, solution-provider program and communication from the partnership subcategory. Of note, Maxtor also placed second for the loyalty subcategory.

However, Seagate did beat Maxtor in both product innovation and support, despite finishing last overall. That's because the higher marks partners gave Maxtor in partnership and loyalty lifted it to second place overall in the study.