Solution Providers Split On Best Workstation

Workstations have been overshadowed of late, seemingly lost between the fierce market-share battle between Dell and Hewlett-Packard in the PC arena, and increasingly heated competition between Sun Microsystems and IBM in the high-end server market. So it's refreshing to see the spotlight turn back on workstations, thanks to a tug-of-war between two tech giants in the 2003 VARBusiness Annual Report Card.

In a rare ARC tie, HP and Sun shared the award for advanced desktops and workstations. But the award--and the joy of beating last year's winner, IBM--is about all the rivals share. Although HP's and Sun's respective channel executives, Kevin Gilroy and Gary Grimes, joked about being buddies onstage at the ARC awards dinner at CMP's recent XChange 2003 event, the two vendors are out to steal each other's Unix business.

Sun and HP took slightly different routes to victory in the category. Sun, which won the award in 2001, saw a much improved loyalty rating, thanks to recent efforts to improve support and resources for its iForce partners.

"This category represents the traditional sweet spot for Sun Microsystems, and it's heartening to know that our partners still recognize our commitment to this technology," Grimes says.

Red River Computer, a government integrator based in Lebanon, N.H., partners with both vendors, but when it comes to servers and workstations on the Unix platform, Red River is exclusive to Sun.

"Sun is our most important vendor," says Andrew Sullivan, manager of Sun business development at Red River. "There's been an epic change with Sun's channel business in the past year-and-a-half. They've really started embracing the channel community again."

HP, on the other hand, continued to improve its numbers in the product innovation subcategory since integrating products from Compaq; the company also edged out Sun in partnership. Tommy Wald, president and CEO of Riata Technologies in Austin Texas, believes that HP is the better of the two winners.

"I believe many customers are seeking a good, quality high-performance workstation, and HP's models are easy to install and are well-supported," he says.

For now, HP and Sun will have to share the award and wait until next year to break the stalemate.