Sun strengthens position in emerging industries by expanding partner network

Before recruiting its new partners, Sun invested in Middle East-specific market analysis to determine which sectors in the region were experiencing significant growth. Research revealed growing demand for technology solutions in industries across the region including financial services, government, healthcare, education and manufacturing.

Armed with this information, Sun has strategically developed its partner network by entering relationships with organizations that specialize in addressing specific industries. As a result, Sun has increased its partner network by more than 40 percent in the past year to meet the needs of the Middle East's business community.

"Market research combined with customer feedback indicated that there were specific industries and business needs not being adequately addressed in the regional market. To meet that demand, Sun has further developed its partner network by seeking new alliances with companies demonstrating industry-specific expertise," said Mehmet Iyimen, managing director, Sun Microsystems Middle East & North Africa.

"The market requirements we're seeing most consistently include sector-specific functionality and templates, because smaller and mid-size organizations can implement these more quickly and they begin delivering immediate business value," added Iyimen.

In the last six to nine months, Ali Ben Ali, ADB, Edutech, High Tech Payment Systems and Mindscape have all come on board as new Sun partners in the MENA region. Each of these organizations has built at least one industry-specific solution using Sun development software, which can be run in a Sun hardware environment.

The expansion of the partner network is a key component of Sun's overall channel strategy, which is enabled throughout the region by the company's channel development provider (CDP) in the Middle East, Tech Access.

With the assistance of Tech Access and its Dubai Internet City-based Solutions Centre, which is an authorized iForce Ready Centre, Sun partners have the added advantage of being able to test the performance of their solutions on the Sun platform.

Sun was one of the first technology vendors in the MENA region to implement the CDP model more than three years ago, when it appointed Tech Access to manage relations with and fulfillment for its reseller community.