But Microsoft' partner network -- the IT industry's largest, said Chapman -- has not been sitting on its hands, waiting for the good times to return.
"The biggest change that they've made in the last 12 months," she said, "is in repackaging existing products and services, and introducing new products and services. They've been re-evaluating their business, asking themselves 'What are we really selling here?' and 'How are we going to stay alive?'"
According to the numbers, more than half of the partners surveyed said that adding new products and services was the single-most important factor in increasing their revenue.
Other findings of the SoftwareMind's survey included spotlighting financial services and the insurance sector as the most significant sources of revenues for Microsoft's resellers. And no surprise -- what with the bruising that Microsoft's taken in 2003 on the security side -- fully 60 percent of the partners expect to pull in more green from security products and services in the next year.
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