Creative Technology and Training Solutions, based in Shelby Township, Mich., filed suit against Business Objects in January in Michigan’s Oakland County Circuit Court. The lawsuit seeks $330,000 in product commissions on five deals that Creative Technology said it is contractually owed but for which it was never paid.

Michael Ward, senior partner at Creative Technology, called the commissions issue one of several disputes his consultancy now has with Business Objects. He complains of being undercut in deals by the vendor’s direct sales force and being pressured by the vendor to shut down his training business. “There are many current partners and former partners in the same boat,” he said. “We were all reluctant to rock the boat because if you make any waves at all, they drop you as a partner.”

Business Objects casts Creative Technology as a disgruntled gadfly and filed a countersuit last month claiming licensing breaches and trademark infringements by the consultancy. This case is the only currently pending litigation about commission nonpayment, according to Business Objects. “We believe that this dispute with Creative Technology is an isolated matter,” said Business Objects spokesman Peter Olson.

But a handful of former partners echo Ward’s comments about a contentious relationship with a partner they once valued. One issue fueling the schism is Business Objects’ ongoing crackdown on unaffiliated, third-party training businesses.

“They threatened to put me out of business last summer,” said George Peck, president of The Ablaze Group and the author of a half-dozen reference books on Crystal Reports.

Ablaze, with headquarters in Evergreen, Colo., ended its alliance with Crystal Decisions a year or so before Business Objects’ 2003 acquisition of the vendor. Ablaze renewed talks with Business Objects in the middle of last year about becoming a sanctioned training partner. But Business Objects rejected the training materials Ablaze created and demanded it stop using them.

For now, Ablaze continues using its materials and is waiting to see if Business Objects will take further action.

Ken Hamady, another unaffiliated Crystal Reports trainer, launched a crusade against what he views as Business Objects’ unreasonable attempts to use its software licensing to block all unauthorized third-party training. Hamady’s Web site includes a collection of communications among VARs, user groups and Business Objects detailing the dispute.

Business Objects’ spokesman acknowledged that the company is herding trainers toward its affiliate program, though he stopped short of saying it will take holdouts to court.

“We’re trying as much as possible to make sure that they have all independent trainers certified,” Olson said. “We’re trying to make sure that no one is in violation of their specific contract with Business Objects.”

Of course, plenty of Business Objects’ partners remain happy. B.I. Builders, a services firm in Seattle, said it hasn’t found itself competing for sales and services deals—it concentrates on the midmarket and stays out of the enterprise accounts on which Business Objects focuses its direct attention. “It’s fairly cooperative and has been good for us,” said B.I. Builders President Peter Buckley. “The goal for Business Objects, as I understand it, is that they want their professional services organization to work on long-term deals with enterprise customers.”

Still, Business Objects will need to take care not to alienate partners. One reseller said, “When they joined Business Objects, it was a smaller company. They needed partners. Now that they’ve grown bigger, they want to grow their own services revenue, so they’re stepping on their partners. It’s typical.”

"It's a great product and it's doing great things for people," said Michael Ward, founder and principal of Creative TechnologyTraining Solutions in Shelby Township, Mich. "But they're hurting partners, and that hurts their customers."

Ward filed a lawsuit against Business Objects early last year in Michigan's Oakland County Circuit Court, seeking payment for $330,000 in product sales commissions that CTTS says it was owed but never paid. Business Objects responded with a countersuit charging CTTS with licensing breaches and trademark infringements.

Both lawsuits have been dropped as part of a settlement finalized last week, which gave Ward financial compensation he deemed reasonable, along with other concessions.

"I didn't get everything, in terms of financials, that I should have been entitled to, but no one does in a settlement," Ward said. He declined to disclose the amount Business Objects agreed to pay.

Business Objects did not respond in time for publication to a request for comment on the litigation with CTTS.

In addition to financial compensation, Ward extracted a concession he deemed equally important: An agreement that Business Objects won't take action against him for his training business. Like a number of other independent training consultants, CTTS offers Business Objects training but is not one of the company's authorized education partners. That arrangement may put it in violation of Business Objects' license terms, which appear to block licensees from using Business Objects' software in commercial training classes without authorization.

Multiple independent trainers have reported receiving letters from Business Objects warning them to pay up for a "classroom license agreement" or discontinue their training offerings. One irate trainer, Ken Hamady, posted a copy of the letter on his Web site.

Ward's settlement with Business Objects allows him to continue offering his training services without paying for Business Objects' classroom license or using its official training materials, he said.

But the run-up to the settlement involved a fair bit of hardball, according to Ward. Business Objects abruptly discontinued his tech support late last year, claiming Ward was behind on paying invoices Ward says he never received. Getting service reinstated has been a drawn-out affair; with the settlement signed, Ward hopes to be back on support soon.

Business Objects' showdown with CTTS comes amid grumbling from some partners about the company's encroachment on their turf. While Business Objects' net license fees rose from $516 million to $560 million between 2005 and 2006, the percentage of those fees that came from direct sales increased from 51 percent in 2005 to 54 percent last year. Meanwhile, Business Objects' professional services revenue grew to 196 million, a 31 percent increase over the prior year.

Under new leadership since late 2005, when John Schwarz replaced company co-founder Bernard Liautaud as CEO, Business Objects is fighting for a vanguard position in a rapidly shifting -- and consolidating -- market.

Enterprise application giants like Microsoft and Oracle (which recently snapped up Hyperion, a Business Objects rival) are gunning for a bigger share of the business intelligence market, while the industry's surviving pure-play vendors struggle to adapt to the software-as-a-service rise and to changing economics that require stronger midmarket sales. To better target the midmarket, Business Objects recently launched a new Crystal Decisions-branded line of lower-cost offerings, a move popular with VARs.

BusinessObjects was acquired by SAP in 2007 for $6 billion. BusinessObjects was acquired by SAP in 2009 for $78 billion, its largest acquisition to date. Initially, BusinessObjects operated independently, but in 2009 became a SAP division, and its products became SAP BusinessObjects.

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