2012 Channel Champs: How Well Do Vendors Support You?

Support Satisfaction

CRN Channel Champions are crowned by solution providers. They vote on the capabilities of more than 100 IT vendors in 27 product categories, rating them on a number of criteria. (Factors may vary from product category to product category.) For support satisfaction, the factors may include: Presales and postsales support, general availability of technical training, evaluation and demo equipment policies, and education and enablement.

Read on to see whether the vendors you rely on are among our 10 Channel Champs in the support satisfaction subcategory.

10. Support Satisfaction: Microsoft

Category: Business Intelligence
Support Satisfaction Rating: 73.8

Among the five criteria that comprise the support satisfaction subcategory, Microsoft's best score was in postsales support with a 75.5 in the Business Intelligence category. It lost two subcategory criteria: Presales support (to IBM), and evaluation and demo equipment policies (to SAP). Microsoft's largest margin of victory within this subcategory was in general availability of technical training.

9. Support Satisfaction: Lenovo

Category: Tablets
Support Satisfaction Rating: 73.9

Lenovo swept each of the five criteria in support satisfaction in the Tablets category, which is new to Channel Champs in 2012. Lenovo's largest margin of victory was in evaluation and demo equipment policies.

8. Support Satisfaction: IBM

Category: Middleware
Support Satisfaction Rating: 73.9

IBM finished second in overall support satisfaction in the Middleware category for 2012. It beat the Channel Champ in one criterion in support satisfaction: Presales support. IBM had won the support satisfaction subcategory in 2011, sweeping all five criteria.

7. Support Satisfaction: Kaspersky Lab

Category: Network Security Software
Support Satisfaction Rating: 74.4

Kaspersky Lab narrowly beat Trend Micro for this subcategory win in Network Security Software. It won two of the five criteria: evaluation and demo equipment policies, and education and enablement—with its greatest margin of victory coming in the former. Trend Micro won postsales support and presales support; McAfee took general availability of technical training.

6. Support Satisfaction: Cisco

Category: SMB Networking Hardware
Support Satisfaction Rating: 75.2

Cisco won the Channel Champ crown for the support subcategory in SMB Networking Hardware, sweeping all five criteria. Its highest score and widest margin of victory with a score of 89.7 came in postsales support, where it beat last-place D-Link by nearly 15 points.

5. Support Satisfaction: Citrix

Category: Server & Desktop Virtualization
Support Satisfaction Rating: 75.4

Citrix won two of the support satisfaction criteria in the Server and Desktop Virtualization category: Presales support, and evaluation and demo equipment policies. VMware narrowly edged out Citrix in this subcategory (see next slide). The vendors, which also included Microsoft, Oracle and Red Hat, scored higher than in 2011 in each of the subcategory criteria.

4. Support Satisfaction: VMware

Category: Server & Desktop Virtualization
Support Satisfaction Rating: 75.8

Among the five criteria for the support satisfaction subcategory, VMware won three in Server and Desktop Virtualization: Postsales support, general availability of technical training, and education and enablement. The vendor beat Citrix by less than half a percentage point for the overall subcategory win.

3. Support Satisfaction: Intel

Category: Processors
Support Satisfaction Rating: 76.1

Intel beat its closest competitor, AMD, by more than nine points in support satisfaction in the Processors category -- similar to the score spread the year before. The chip maker's greatest margin of victory came in postsales support with 84.7, beating last-place Nvidia by 10 points and AMD by nearly 11 points.

2. Support Satisfaction: Microsoft

Category: Middleware
Support Satisfaction Rating: 76.6

Microsoft came in first in support satisfaction in Middleware. Of the five criteria, Microsoft won four: postsales support, evaluation and demo equipment policies, general availability of technical training, and education and enablement. It lost presales support to IBM. The greatest score difference was a nearly 8-point spread between Microsoft and last-place Oracle in education and enablement.

10. Support Satisfaction: Cisco

Category: Unified Communications
Support Satisfaction Rating: 78.7

Cisco crushed the competition, sweeping all the criteria in the support satisfaction subcategory in Unified Communications as it had in 2011. Its scores in each of the five criteria handily beat those of its rivals; for example, Cisco's postsales support score of 84.7 was nearly 16 points higher than that of last-place Avaya's.

More Channel Champs Coverage

2012 Channel Champions:
CRN's 2012 Channel Champions
Overall Winners
Financial Factors
Technical Satisfaction