We don’t think the numbers tell the whole story. Business decisions, market strategies and scoring metrics aside, we believe that Sun.com represents one of the most significant sites to watch over the next 12 months

Although Sun.com ranks third among the enterprise systems Websites based on overall score in our Q3.06 evaluations, we think there’s more to this site than rankings. In a world where the vast majority of vendors are realigning their sites by audience (see HP.com and Dell.com—and to a lesser extent, IBM.com), Sun.com has made the decision not to execute audience-specific (e.g. small business, medium business and enterprise) zones. From a scoring perspective, it’s a decision that costs Sun.com dearly. Consider this. Sun.com forgoes 600 points by not providing the small, medium and enterprise zones deployed by competitors—and these additional points alone would assure it second place on a pure criteria and scoring basis. Deduct the impact of low community usability and effectiveness scores on overall performance scores, and Sun.com would end up in first place.

This, of course, brings us to a salient point that we will be considering in future Index Report analyses; how enterprise vendors are pursuing various business strategies; the impact of these shifts on Website decisions—and the scoring gaps that are created due to these important business decisions.

In this regard, we’re only seeing the tip of the proverbial iceberg. For example, one can clearly see the impact of IBM’s decision to spin off Lenovo in its lower e-commerce scores over the past year. In a world increasingly tilted toward sites optimized around audiences and discrete industries, the impact on Sun.com’s scores is obvious. Meanwhile, HP.com’s focus on a wide swatch of audience segments (home/home office, small & medium business and large enterprises, plus industry foci) gives it a distinct scoring advantage—but one that is evaporating as we speak. Bottom line, the level playing field is moving as enterprise vendors shift their strategies to refine their value propositions and gain a competitive advantage on the Web.

So where does this leave Sun.com, who operates one of the smaller and more tightly-focused sites in this segment? This is a case where we don’t think the numbers tell the whole story. Business decisions, market strategies and scoring metrics aside, we believe that Sun.com represents one of the most significant sites to watch over the next 12 months for several reasons:

• This site continues to have one of the most effective hardware selection and discovery click streams in the IT industry—and has recently enhanced these clickstreams with one of the most robust, and useable Product Finders on the IT Web. In the future, look for significant enhancements that will include the ability for prospect’ to include their business and technical objectives or conditions in the selection/sort criteria.

Sun.com’s new User Reviews underscore that the company is not afraid of embracing a world where the Web becomes a dialog—and prospects are able to learn from existing customers’ experiences and opinions

• Sun.com is a pioneer in the use of now-classic Web 2.0 features, including inline video, blogs, podcasts and RSS feeds—and has been especially adept at weaving these features into the site’s current clickstreams and content architectures. Once Sun.com jettisons its reliance on downloading the Real Player plug-in (which sends visitors on a merry chase to obtain the software and then becomes a pest demanding a purchase upgrade) Sun.com’s inline videos will easily become some of the most elegant visual experiences on the Web.

• Sun.com’s new User Reviews underscore that the company is not afraid of embracing a world where the Web becomes a dialog—and prospects are able to learn from existing customers’ experiences and opinions. This may truly end up being a case where a company known for its “engineering driven marketing” (e.g. the best product wins) has a distinct advantage over classic marketing organizations.

• Sun’s new e-commerce clickstreams, which eliminate duplicate marketing and e-commerce catalog pages have streamlined the e-commerce experience for visitors and are a blueprint for companies that are still struggling to rationalize and integrate these different systems and sponsoring organizations.

Sun’s integration of global customer (discount) prices into its public site e-commerce experience is the first step in creating a world where customer extranets cease to be a distinct destination

• Sun’s integration of global customer (discount) prices into its public site e-commerce experience is the first step in creating a world where customer extranets cease to be a distinct destination—and become a personalized experience on the company’s public Website. This capability, and forthcoming announcements from other enterprise systems vendors, are set to revolutionize how companies think about their current customer extranets.

• Sun.com’s new home page (launched in early December 2006) further emphasizes the trend toward task-based home page designs (in Sun’s case, “Discover,” “Participate,” and “Find & Buy” and the power of roll-overs to provide visitors with fast navigation paths to content located deep in the site. Of particular interest is Sun.com’s community listing—which puts customer success stories and Sun’s rich catalog of blogs front and center for visitors.