Sun is making some significant changes to its channel program by aligning it with the company's new U.S. growth strategies, according to Bill Cate, director of Sun's U.S. iForceSM Program Office as reported by Karen D. Schwartz with the Channel Insider. Strategies include giving partners incentives to sell a greater variety of products and services to existing accounts; improving the mix of products Sun partners sell; and capturing new customers.

Cate admitted that its channel program has room for improvement, particularly in what and where their partners sell as well as in accounting for and rewarding growth.

"Those are three areas that our programs don't measure extremely well today. Instead, (the current program) is more focused on two big elements - how much infrastructure do you have invested in Sun, and how much revenue are you bringing in," Cate said. "Those are important metrics, but if we're going to align with our U.S. growth strategy, we also want to reward partners on where they sell, what they sell and how much they grow."

Cate indicated that Sun does plan to reward its partners for selling a stronger mix of Sun products and services, and it intends to pay more for revenues and accounts in the midmarket space.

"We don't want to change existing programs, but we want to take a broader reach into that next level of partners that are doing all of the right things but aren't quite fitting the participation criteria we laid out for the very top program's design," Cate said. "We'll continue with programs like Software Elite, Storage Elite, our Solar Edge programs and our services program. We're just enhancing it and rewarding partners that have a stronger mix of Sun products."

Programs that are slated to be discontinued, include the Sun Fund program, which is expected to cease operation on October 1. The Sun Fund program provides co-op dollars for training, marketing, advertising and equipment, and some VARs are concerned that Sun won't have a replacement program ready until Feb. 1, said John Murphy, co-president of Sun's National VAR Advisory Council and president of Advanced Systems Group Inc., a systems integrator based in Denver, reported Schwartz.

On the other hand, some within Sun's channel are looking forward to an improved funding program. Tom Kuni, co-president of Sun's National VAR Advisory Council and president of SSIhubcity, a solution provider based in Metuchen, N.J., commented, "I think Sun is headed toward an operational expense type disbursement of its funds instead of an accrual methodology, which would allow partners more liberal usage of the funds going forward."

Kuni concurs with Cate on which partners will benefit from this anticipated new program. "Partners that are more in step with Sun's direction and want to sell Sun storage, software, services and servers are going to be in a better position to benefit from the next program than those that just selectively sell servers, for example," he said. "I think it's going to be Sun's way of feeding the eagles and starving the turkeys."

By year's end, it is expected that Sun will reveal details of the new channel program with additional marketing program details released in the second quarter of 2006, and the launch of its new U.S. and global growth programs in the third quarter. [...read more...]

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