Computing: The forces that forged the Suntel alliance

Interesting article about a different perspective to the Suntel-Deal: The forces that forged the Suntel alliance:

So the SIs – the firms with both specific market knowledge and increasingly trusted brands – are becoming the front line for hardware and software vendors like Intel and Sun, because they are the companies that users turn to first.

In my personal opinion the x86 business has to be an business for system integrators or as an part of a project, because the low margins at 1 or 2 processor systems doesn´t let much room for presales. SI can cover the presales costs in bigger solutions but when you only sell the box, you must keep human work out of the equation as long as possible. As Intel has a huge influence to the SI ecosphere, it has a positive effect for Sun to have Intel in the boat for sure.