By Ramdas S
Sun’s acquisition by Oracle has two unofficial beneficiaries, HP and IBM. Taking advantage of the confusion prevailing among customers and partners, both companies have come up with focused initiatives to lure Sun customers through a series of buy back schemes and rebates. They have also released migration tools for moving customers from Solaris to their platforms.
“We have launched the Sun Complete Care program, which offers customers a wide variety of specialized services, support programs and financial incentives to switch from Sun to HP. We are working proactively with the channel to ensure that the program is easily available,” said Santanu Ghose, Country Manager, Business Critical Systems and NonStop Servers, HP India.
IBM is also aggressively pushing its partners to go after Sun accounts. Globally, IBM claims to have doubled the number of Sun customer accounts wins in Q2 2009 compared to Q1. “We see a big opportunity in providing risk mitigation and migration paths to existing Sun customers. In our opinion, Oracle might not be keen on servers or storage as one of its core business,” said Shailesh Agarwal, VP, Sales Programs, Systems and Technology Group, IBM India and South Asia. “One of our big wins recently was Sun Direct TV.”
Agarwal further added that IBM and its partners are in touch with all major Sun accounts, and over the past six months have engaged at some level with at least one-third of them. “We have been conducting workshops showing them how easy it is to migrate from Sun to IBM without any business discontinuity.”
On the channel front too, IBM is leaving no stone unturned to enroll Sun’s loyal partners. “Many partners are concerned about the lack of clarity regarding Oracle’s plans for Sun’s storage and server business. They believe that Oracle may not be interested in the hardware business, while a few have expressed concerns that Oracle will increase maintenance and support fees once the acquisition is complete. We have reached out to more than 100 of Sun's largest resellers, globally and in India. More than 90 percent of them are seeking a closer relationship with IBM,” added Agarwal.
HP too is doing all it can to lure Sun partners. “We have taken onboard several loyal Sun hardware partners and have already started training and certifying them, and also providing marketing assistance. We have rolled out an attractive program for ISV partners with Solaris-based applications to help port their application on HP,” said Ghose.
Delhi-based HP partner Zest Systems confirmed HP’s overtures in luring Sun customers. “HP is using all tools at their disposal to convert Sun business. In fact, we are working at breaking into a couple of Sun accounts with full support from HP and are close to bagging the deals,” said Rajeev Mehta, Managing Director, Zest Systems. |