This IDC Presentation provides results from 10 executive interviews conducted during May 2012 with IT channel executives. To participate in the study interviews, the channel partner had to be actively engaged in selling and deploying converged systems.

The duration of the interview was 1 hour. The purpose of the interview was to uncover channel attitudes concerning the market potential for converged systems, current momentum in the channel, selling motion challenges, and advantages/disadvantages to the channel partner's business with converged systems versus discrete system sales. Interviewees were sent an interview guide ahead of time to prepare. Key findings and common themes from these interviews are included in this report, although the results are purely qualitative in nature and are not statistically significant.

This report is the third in a series of reports included in the Special Report entitled Converged Systems 2012: State of the Market and Future Outlook. For more information on all reports included in the report series, please refer to www.idc.com.