Without Gates, Microsoft`s Channel Changes Little - How it Began
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Industry experts
say Microsoft's channel really hit its stride with the Windows 95 and 98
releases. As demand for the operating
systems increased and Microsoft blew competitors out of the water, the company
needed to be able to scale much more quickly than it could simply by selling
directly to consumers and businesses.
Enter the channel.
"In
Microsoft's heyday, they had their best successes in the enterprise, when
everyone was deploying Exchange servers, when people were moving to Windows 95
and 98," says Bahl.
As a result, many VARs
also fared exceedingly well during those high times.
"At the
beginning, with those big OS releases, Gates, Ballmer and all of the management
team were very aware of the role the channel played," says Michael Cherry,
analyst for research firm Directions on Microsoft. He adds that the relationship between
Microsoft and its channel organization has always been symbiotic.
"Microsoft really
is a company most people don't deal with directly," Cherry says. Consumer
products are sold through retail channels and preinstalled on hardware from
OEMs, and no matter their size, businesses deal mostly with Windows VARs, he
adds.
"Just as two
examples, Microsoft's CRM and ERP packages
are so complex and daunting, it's difficult to see how any company, large or
small, wouldn't want to bring [a VAR] in and
get help from someone who has experience with the products, someone who's done
this before," Cherry says.
Of course, without
the channel, it's fairly certain Microsoft could have sold in other ways,
including direct, but perhaps wouldn't have been so profitable, says Cherry. And as for the channel, well, he says even
without Microsoft, there were plenty of other options to keep VARs busy.
"If not
Windows, it's a safe bet to say something else would have come along. There
were plenty of other competitors, including Apple and Commodore," he says,
as hard as that is to imagine now.
Cherry adds that there were quite successful VAR
channels that sprung up around other computer systems, including Novell’s
Netware, for example.
Microsoft Partner 
