Microsoft, Oracle, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Symantec and Veritas have united in the Sun Microsystems Associate Vendor Network (AVN) to focus on the small and medium enterprise (SME) market.
Members of the AVN shared a platform in Kyalami last night at the official launch of Sun's Volume Product Reseller (VPR) programme. Representatives of each vendor highlighted benefits of the programme and detailed the market-specific products they would contribute.
Sun is to recruit 100 resellers to the two-year VPR programme designed to provide market-specific products, channel and end-user support, and a platform for marketing additional services. Sun, in conjunction with its channel development partner, Horizon, is to announce successful applicants in mid-July.
"Sun's product set is perceived to be too complex and expensive for the SME market, but with the introduction of Sun's new volume product set, that is no longer true," said Vito Bonafede, Sun regional director.
Fred Kohout, Sun EMEA regional marketing VP, said Sun's recent agreements with Microsoft, AMD and other major vendors were aimed at removing barriers and extending the range of choice for the market to include lower priced entry-level products from partners.
Jos Nickmans, Sun regional channel manager, detailed the benefits of the VPR programme, emphasising the limit on the number of VPRs, and the incentive of a cheque to the value of 1% of all volume product sales in the first year of the programme.
"The estimated size of the SME market means that an individual salesperson could receive a cheque for R1 million or more this time next year," Nickmans said to applause from the audience of potential VPRs.
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