Sudhir Nayar is happy with the key developments that have taken place at Sun in the last six to eight months, especially on the channel front. He believes that new initiatives for the channel, along with better technology products, would go a long way in helping Sun increase its geographic coverage in the country.

2005 has been a year of new products and solutions for Sun. Is the channel well equipped to handle these constant introductions of new products?
Truly, 2005 has been a year where Sun has further entrenched its position in the industry through new products; be it Solaris 10 or the Galaxy range or the 'Niagara chip.' Sun's innovations have paid off very well with each product launch and this has helped us to create a unique position for ourselves in the market.

Sudhir Nayar Director-Partner and Alliance Sales, Sun Microsystems

We believe that the sheer functionality of these technologies already has competition scrambling to come up with alternatives to match our technology. At this juncture I must indicate that the channel has played a very significant role in Sun's overall scheme of things and even on that front there have been several developments over the last one-year.

Talking about the channel, what were the most significant developments in 2005 for Sun?
One of the most significant developments has been the appointment of eSys Information Technologies as Sun's Channel Development Partner (CDP), to further expand our reach into tier-two and three cities across the country. Also, to take advantage of the growing economy and newer products, Sun launched a new partner program to replace the earlier iForce program.

We have initiated programs last year that has helped Sun reduce the cost of channel operations and hence improve profitability of our partners considerably. Our decision to join TCS, Wipro, Infosys and Satyam for Solaris 10 Global Migration Program will help global customers migrate proprietary data center environments to the Open Solaris 10 OS. With the software side of the business really picking up, Sun has also launched several incentives for its partners to motivate them to sell complete Sun stacks, rather than
individual Sun products.

How would you equip your partners to help you in expansion plans in India?
Sun has always been a partner-friendly organization. Given that we have a whole new range of products and technologies
for partners to sell, we will offer partners all the required training to make them more competitive.

As a first step, we have started 'Partner boot camps' across the country. These are week-long residential training programs whereby the partners get hands on training from Sun both on the technical aspects as well as soft skills and selling expertise, besides specializations. In the last 12 months we have trained over 200 people and we hope to add about 150 more in the next two quarters. Partners have also been facilitated with an online 'Partner portal' whereby they get access to all training programs that are conducted.

Besides training what other initiatives would your partners get to help them sell better?
Whether it is training or any other program, we need to create an excitement for the partner to work with us, especially when we deal with value added products. Through our program called 'Sun Surge,' we target pre-sales and sales personnel, we allot the partner a set of points for the sales that he does. Based on the points gained he could win a trip abroad and meet up with Sun's team there. In addition we also invest in the partners' business development activity and provide all required infrastructure to help them in new lead generations.

Among other initiatives that Sun has undertaken to motivate its partners, is a one-year program during which team members of the partner organization would work very closely with our team to learn all the required skills, technology, processes even while he sells for his organization. We have about 10 partner representatives for this program already. They then use this learning to grow their business.

What would be your key verticals of growth this year? And how would you choose your partners to crack those verticals?
As far as Sun goes, we have been very strong on the BFSI and telecom verticals. We would continue to grow there. Other verticals of focus are manufacturing, government, education and research, defence, healthcare and retail. As far as partners for these go, we would chose the city and partner based on the verticals we target there and would include SIs and SPs.

We would be looking to sign up with partners who bring us a value proposition and have specific technical skills or are willing to acquire them. A sound financial background and good track record are a must to sign up, in addition to the fact that would focus more on partners who can help expand our reach.

Subbalakshmi BM

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