Findcate

Money Management International (MMI), the nation’s largest nonprofit credit and debt counseling and education firm, announced today the results of a survey designed to measure consumer sentiment and coping mechanisms in light of the current economic instability.

While experts are hesitant to define the current economic situation as a recession, 86 percent of respondents are feeling the effects of an economic downturn. Coping mechanisms for financial hardship vary widely, from eating out less to dipping into savings accounts or relying on credit cards. Interestingly, when asked about the most extreme sacrifice they’d make if the economic downturn continues, nearly half of respondents (41 percent) indicated they would take on an additional job.

Unfortunately, a second job may not be a viable option for many consumers. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate shot up in May by the highest amount in over 20 years, and has remained steady at 5.5 percent, up from 4.6 percent a year ago. Even more troubling, the number of people out of work for more than six months has increased by 37 percent since June of 2007.

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The company on Wednesday added two enhancements to its Sun Partner Advantage Program, including a social networking platform and new tools to help partners demonstrate the value of their solutions to their customers.

The first, ExecConnect by Sun, is a social networking environment aimed at helping partners collaborate for new ideas and find opportunities to work with each other, said Bill Cate, the vendor’s vice president of global sales.

ExecConnect came about from a meeting in January between Sun executives, including CEO and President Jonathan Schwartz and about 150 partners from 27 countries. Solution providers asked how to keep up spirit of collaboration developed at the meeting, which lead Sun to develop the program, Cate said.

ExecConnect is an invite-only forum which allows partners to communicate with each other and connect to Sun executives, including Schwartz; Peter Ryan, vice president of global sales and executive sponsor of the forum; and Anil Gadre, executive vice president and CMO.

The forum lets them start and follow discussion threads and open folders specific to certain geographies, share articles and other materials, and poll other partners on things like what applications work best in certain situation, Cate said.

Partners could use other social networks, such as FaceBook, but Sun offers a secure environment where they can communicate with their peers, Cate said.

That’s an important prerequisite to using such a social networking forum, said John Murphy, executive vice president at Advanced Systems Group, a Denver-based Sun partner and former head of Sun’s partner council.

“As far as getting feedback from changes to programs, Sun hopes that partners will contribute,” he said. “If they don’t, it doesn’t matter, but it is a way for them to discuss the changes. There’s a lot of value in that. The bi-annual partner meetings are kind of spotty for getting such feedback.”

However, Murphy said Sun cannot expect its solution partners to start working together just because they have a new social networking tool.

Sun on Wednesday also unveiled the Sun Value Platform, a Web-based sales tool for helping solution providers show customers their expected return on investment using Sun solutions.

Cate said Sun Value Platform helps solution providers justify customers’ investments by looking at Sun and competitive platforms to see how a new solution compares to existing solutions, and to model expected future costs.

The Sun Value Platform, which came out of Sun’s StorageTek business, currently is available for storage solutions, but in the future is expected to be expanded to other specializations like virtualization, SOA (services-oriented architecture), high-performance computing, MySQL, ID management, and open storage, Cate said.

In theory, Sun Value Platform can be a significant tool, but only if Sun can keep the important content up-to-date, Murphy said.

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