The rationale was that iXL and companies like MarchFirst were part of a new breed of influencers, despite the fact that their sales organizations were undeveloped and that much of their revenue was derived from dot-coms. One year later, faced with a meltdown in the Web integrator market and its potential impact on sales of its servers, Sun is taking a giant step backward. Joe Womack, Sun's VP of Americas, Partner Sales, says the emphasis this year will be on turnkey solutions created by integrators and their partners. We don't see customers buying over the Web. The average installation has 23 to 32 vendors.
Nobody wants to manage that.
What customers are looking for is a turnkey solution. Last spring, we said we were very agnostic about how they bought that solution. This year, we're going to be emphasizing turnkey solutions. The vendor also will need to emphasize sales. Several Sun partners now report soft sales and say Sun is taking extra care to make its numbers this quarter.