See you in court: The channel's most acrimonious splits
A rundown of the biggest channel bust-ups in recent history
EMC's decision to boot storage ISV Egnyte off its partner programme last week - seemingly over a press release - got us thinking about how easily channel partners can fall out of love.
Like any marriage, the bond between vendors and their reseller, OEM, ISV or distribution partners is easily broken if one side is caught cheating or the two parties simply grow apart. And just like celebrity splits, the seperation process can be bitter, as well as ugly, as the lawyers are called in and snide comments are exchanged in the press.
EMC and Egnyte are just the latest to perform a conscious uncoupling after the ISV released a press release last week touting its new Storage Sync for EMC VNX offering. For whatever reason (according to reports, Egyte suspects it's because its product competes with EMC's Syncplicity offering; EMC says the press release was unapproved and inaccurate) the missive led EMC to see red and terminate Egyte from its Tech Connect referral programme.
But the duo's split is pretty small beer compared with some of the blockbuster bust-ups witnessed by the channel in the past.
HP and Cisco
Ring-side seats were a must for the unedifying spectacle that was the unravelling of Cisco and HP's alliance, culminating in Cisco booting HP off its partner programme in 2010. The writing was on the wall for this bickering couple for several years as HP moved onto Cisco networking turf and Cisco did the same with servers. Indicating that relations have hardly improved since then, the duo - like a divorced couple making their children pick sides - forced partners to choose between their respective partner summits this year due to a clash of dates. Underlining their new-found enmity, the duo can currently be found going tooth and nail at each other in a war for cloud supremacy.
Seagate and eSys
Hard-drive vendor Seagate's bitter split with former distribution partner eSys turned into a three-year court battle that put Jarndyce versus Jarndyce to shame. Seagate dropped Singapore-based eSys because it denied it access to its accounts following a spat over programme credits under its sales incentive programme. The terms and conditions of their settlement have remained a secret ever since the pair settled out of the court in 2009, but we can't help wondering if either of them will over love again following the ordeal.
Cisco and Phoenix IT Group
Vendors are constantly bumping resellers up or down their partner programmes based on whether targets are hit, accreditations are satisfied and ts & cs and authorised buying routes are respected. However, it's another thing for a top-level Gold partner to be booted out altogether by a vendor the size of Cisco, which happened in the case of Phoenix IT Group last Autumn. Neither party has officially commented but, given the severity of the punishment, all fingers point to a bust-up over ts and cs. Having presumably drowned its sorrows with a bottle of wine while listening to Gloria Gaynor, Phoenix quickly got back onto its feet, dolled itself up and found another beau in the shape of Cisco rival Huawei, for which it is now one of only two UK Gold partners.
EMC and Dell
EMC and Dell seemed like a match made in heaven until Dell started cheating on the storage giant in 2007 by going on a storage acquisition binge. At the time Dell bought EqualLogic, Dell accounted for a whopping 15 per cent of EMC's sales - one of the biggest resale relationships in the history of the channel. Four years later, the love had gone out of the relationship completely as Dell ripped up its contract to sell EMC gear including CLARiiON, Celerra, Data Domain and VNX gear a full two years early and went it alone as a storage singleton. Admittedly, as divorces go, it was fairly velvety, but it's unlikely the duo remain on each other's Christmas card lists.
Fortinet and VCW
Hell hath no fury like a distributor scorned. When a vendor and distributor go their separate ways, they invariably keep their own counsel. VCW's public spat with ex security vendor partner Fortinet was an exception that proves the rule. The distributor vowed to "protect its commercials" following the 2010 split as it made some pretty catty comments about its former ally. This sob story is all the more poignant given the duo were childhood sweethearts, with VCW and Fresh Egg (a distributor it bought) seeding the UK market for Fortinet in the years leading up to their split.