Sun Cuts In Partners
By Jessica Davis | Posted 2007-04-27

The system maker changes its direct sales promotion after VARs complain that it undermines in-process channel deals.
Four days after it initiated a sales promotion that offered deep discounts directly to customers on some of its major products, Sun Microsystems is making changes to the program to quell cries of channel conflict from partners.VARs told Sun that the promotion was undermining deals they had underway with customers, the company said in a statement issued late on April 26.
"We regret that this promotion was not more fully inclusive of our partner community," company officials said in the statement. "As a result of discussions with a number of our partners, we have realigned the program to support Sun's channel strategy."

"We underestimated the extent to which promotional pricing could overlap with proposals in process either through our partners and our direct sales force and believe this solution quickly addresses the issue," Sun said.
The Santa Clara, Calif.-based system maker initiated the two-week-long promotion on April 23, offering deep discounts directly to customers and billing it as the Sun 25th Anniversary Sale.
Among the products offered at the discount are several Sun Fire servers, a few Ultra workstations and several StorageTek NAS appliances.
Discounts offered are large. For example, the Sun Fire X4500, regularly priced at $47,995, is now priced at $24,000. The Sun StorageTek 5320 NAS, regularly priced at $44,814, is now priced at $15,630. And the Ultra 45 UltraSPARC workstation, regularly priced at $3,695, is now priced at $2,405.
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