Sun officials hope the new framework will continue to increase the share of business that partners drive. Currently partners are involved in accruing roughly 63 percent of Sun's revenues worldwide, 56 percent in the United States, up from about 42 percent three years ago. Grimes says Sun wants to see this percentage increase, but doesn't have a particular target in mind. "I don't want to say we're shooting for 75 percent if it turns out we'll end up at 80," he says. "The revenue share driven by partners should continue to grow when the engagement model is standardized across the country, but it will seek its own optimal level, like water."
Sun vice president of U.S. sales Bill Cook says the main goal of the new initiative is to underline to partners how integral they are to returning Sun to profitability, something which will be greatly helped by the coming cash influx from the company's recent settlement with Microsoft. "The cold, hard cash certainly helps our war chest, but the bigger story is how it will resolve what has been an irritant for our customers," Cook says. "They're pleased that we'll now be able to figure out ways to make systems more interoperable and help them be more productive. Customers always have perceived us as innovators, and the settlement helps make innovation a safe choice for them. But they don't care whether they're getting blade servers or something else; they care about productivity, interoperability, availability, quality of service and uptime."
Sun's partners say they're looking forward to the efficiencies the new model will bring, especially in the services area. "As hardware platforms evolve, we're seeing more and more commoditization, which propels the need for more services," says Scott Zahl, vice president of marketing and vendor relations for GE Access. "Any negative news from Wall Street doesn't impact our partnership, but it does mean that Sun has to work with them to make sure they understand how Sun continues to be a viable and important piece of the IT industry. The emergence of new Solaris stacks along with the Microsoft settlement and the coming AMD/Opteron products over the coming year should help take Sun into some volume-based markets it's been trying to break into for some time."
The Microsoft settlement also will help Sun as it tries to navigate these new markets. "They'll be the only hardware vendor with that type of relationship with Microsoft," Peterson says. "When two of our larger partners collaborate, it's good for us and good for the channel."
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