HP Beefs Up High-End Service Channel Offerings
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Hewlett-Packard VARs will now be able to sell various enterprise HP
consulting services, as the vendor announced it is moving the services from a
direct sale into the channel.
HP said it will move several of its HP-provided consulting services and educational
services that have traditionally been sold by its own direct organization over
to its Services Elite partners—those that have the highest sales in the
enterprise.
In addition, the company is running a couple of pilot programs around
managed services available from its channel partners. And HP will increase
internal resources by 20 percent to support its services channel partners in
2008, said JoAnn Redding, vice president of HP Technology Services.
"Most of this is in response to an ongoing dialogue with our partners on
what their customers are looking for," Redding
said. "For partners who have a big maintenance service offering, they are
looking for ways to expand beyond box-type services, in some cases more into
consulting and in some cases into managed services. Enterprise
partners that have been on the managed services side want to expand on
that."
Redding recently provided Channel
Insider with an update on HP's channel programs for services.
She said HP will now offer its portfolio of services to partners to resell to
their customers. Services included are virtualization, data center relocation,
green initiatives and assessment services.
"We've had these on the direct side for a while, but now many of these
services are SKUs and we have rolled them out to the channel," Redding
said. The services can either be sold under the HP brand or under the partner
brand with HP doing the delivery.
"There are a lot of partners looking for ways to expand their businesses
without having to build a practice," she said. HP will offer training on
how to sell these services. The company is offering Web-based training on
individual pieces of the services portfolio as well as on-site training, from a
few hours long to two and a half days covering the eight service families
available.
Services Elite partners will receive more free training, additional leads
and additional incentive dollars as a reward for their loyalty to HP and their
ongoing investment with the vendor, according to Redding.
Hewlett-Packard 
